Stored tea, Taste compounds, Aging mechanism, Molecular docking, Kokumi, Nutrition. Foods and food supply, TX341-641, Food processing and manufacture, TP368-456

Natural storage promotes raw Pu-erh tea (RaPT) aging along with chemical conversion and flavor evolution. In this study, quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) and UHPLC-Orbitrap-MS/MS-based non-targeted metabolomics were performed to illustrate dynamic changes of taste compounds across 18 RaPT samples during the storage. Multivariate statistical analyses effectively classified stored RaPT into three groups based on storage stages, confirming that storage duration, rather than environmental conditions, primarily influences the taste profile and the changes in non-volatile compounds. A total of 509 characteristic metabolites (VIP > 1.0, P 1.50 or