Relation of Tea 'Fermentation' to Normal Respiration

Abstract

IT is correct, as Roberts states in his communication¹, that I did not “repeat the conditions under which the Tocklai experiments were carried out”. I attempted² to simulate injuries to tea leaf comparable with those caused during normal tea manufacture. Roberts, however, used an attachment which will grind nuts to a fine paste and thereby caused more structural damage to the leaf than I did with a mincing machine and far more than ever results from tea-rolling during manufacture. He attaches great importance to the shearing forces produced by his attachment because he believes that “such shearing forces are to be considered as responsible for the disorganization of respiratory processes which results in tea-fermentation”—even in the absence of visible cell damage. His own published results³, however, do not give support to that belief.