Electrical Electronics Engineering: Open Access
ISSN: 3071-0774 | DOI: 10.64030/3071-0774
J Waweru, A Andayi, J Mburu, S Kiprotich and R Kung�??u
Kenya is one of the largest exporters of black tea, which contributes to about 26% of the country’s annual export earnings. Kenya’s tea market, however, is faced by a challenge of counterfeit tea products, which compromise its credibility, causing loss of revenues in the sector. The aim of this study was to develop a fingerprint model for origin traceability of Kenyan tea based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the spectroscopic data of nanoparticles and aqueous extracts obtained from twentyone tea leaves sampled from seven tea-growing regions in Kenya. The tea extracts was used to synthesize Zinc oxide, via green synthesis. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized with an X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrophotometer (FTIR) and Ultra violet visible (UV-Vis). The FTIR spectral data showed strong peaks of O-H (3100-3400cm1), C=O (1590-1619 cm-1), C=C (1510-1450cm-1), C-H (2850-2950cm-1), attributed to phenols, catechins, flavonoids, carbonyl from theaflavins, lignin in the tea extracts. The XRD spectrum revealed the wurtzite, ZnO, nanoparticles in all the samples. The crystal size of the nanoparticles was obtained via the Scherrer formula. The data obtained from FT-IR analysis was the analyzed to obtain a PCA scatter plot. The UV-Vis spectra showed that the ZnONP absorbed in the 365-400 nm region. The variance in PCA scatter plot varied from 78.59,84.27 and 88.09 % for FTIR,UV-Vis and XRD respectively. In conclusion, the PCA models from nanoparticle samples (XRD, FTIR, and UV Vis) had the highest variability indicating that the use of NPs spectral data resulted in superior origin traceability models for the Kenyan teas. The novel technique was therefore effective in geographical traceability of Kenyan tea.