Abstract:
Camellia nitidissima is widely used to make tea in south China. The purpose of this research was to investigate the
effect of cultivation on the nutrients of C. nitidissima. In this paper, we make comparative analyses of the nutrient content in
leaves in cultivated and wild C. nitidissima. The results indicate that both cultivated and wild C. nitidissima had a full
complement of amino acids with rich contents and a variety of mineral nutrients. There were no significant differences
between cultivated and wild C. nitidissima in terms of water, vitamin C, gross sugar, protein, fat, nitrogen, phosphorous,
potassium, magnesium or zinc content, but cultivated C. nitidissima had significantly higher contents of essential amino
acids (26.05% ) and total amino acids (33.27%) than that of wild C. nitidissima.
