Exploring the active ingredients and their activities of wolfberry leaves black tea and traditional black tea based on LC-MS/MS

To elucidate the fundamental differences in metabolite composition between wolfberry leaves black tea, which is produced from wolfberry leaves using black tea fermentation techniques, and traditional black tea, this study employed liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry（LC-MS/MS）-based fully targeted metabolomics technology to quantitatively determine and identify metabolites in both types of tea. The results showed that 447 and 381 metabolites were screened in wolfberry leaves black tea and traditional black tea, respectively, with 223 common metabolites and 224 and 158 unique metabolites, indicating a significant distinction in their metabolic profiles. Multivariate statistical analysis further confirmed a clear separation in the overall metabolite composition between the two teas. In terms of the relative content of metabolite categories, wolfberry leaves black tea exhibited relative enrichment in phenylpropanoids and phenolic compounds, while traditional black tea showed richer terpenoids and flavonoid components. At the level of specific markers, L-lysine, tryptophan, 3,4-dihydrocoumarin, esculetin, isoeugenol, geranyl acetate, β-ionone, and safranal were significantly higher in wolfberry leaves black tea than in traditional black tea. In contrast, histidine, diadinoxanthin, coumarin, and quinic acid were more abundant in traditional black tea. This study reveals systematic differences in the material basis between wolfberry leaves black tea and traditional black tea from a metabolomics perspective, clarifies their characteristic compositional profiles, provides a chemical basis for quality evaluation of wolfberry leaves black tea as a novel functional tea beverage, and establishes theoretical support for process adaptation based on raw material characteristics and health function-oriented product development.