Establishment of Element Fingerprints and Application to Geographical Origin Identification of Chinese Fenghuangdancong Tea by ICP-MS

The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of element fingerprints in identifying the geographical origin of Fenghuangdancong and other Chinese tea. A total of 45 elements were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Element fingerprints were established by transferring element composition into graphs. Similarity degrees of element fingerprints and linear discriminant analysis were performed in order to identify tea samples according to their origin. The analysis revealed a satisfactory separation of tea samples according to their origin with 93.3 % classifications rate of similarity degrees and 96.6 % predictive ability of the cross -validation of linear discriminant analysis. There is small difference between each other. The analysis indicated element fingerprints could be used to identify the authenticity of Fenghuangdancong tea.