Discrimination analysis of Indian tea varieties based upon color under optimum illumination

Abstract

The paper investigates optimum light illumination intensity for maximum discrimination of the Indian black tea varieties using machine vision. The technique involves acquisition and analysis of color information of brewed tea liquor after setting different light illumination intensities between 700 and 1,300 lux. The data involving color attributes was analyzed using principal component analysis. It was observed that best discrimination among these tea varieties was achieved between 1,000 and 1,050 lux. The correlation analysis was also performed to show the relationship between color attributes and tea varieties. The study reveals that color attributes are significant parameters for discriminating Indian black tea varieties. The proposed technique is fast, convenient and low cost over the methods involving chemical analysis. It is an important step towards standardization of quality evaluation of tea by instrumented means.