Abstract: Antioxidative enzymes activity in the livers of the mice fed with the sun-dried green tea and the Pu-erh tea with different pile-fermentation degree were studied. Results were as follows: compared with the control group (basic feed group), the hydroxyl radical-scavenging activity, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX) activity and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in the livers of the mice fed with different tea samples were significantly increased(P<0.01), but decreased with the extents of pile-fermentation degree of Pu-erh tea increasing. This increase was the highest in the sun-dried green tea treatment. Of all the treatments, there was a significant negative correlation between the maleic dialdehyde (MDA) content and the SOD activity and the correlative coefficient was -0.942. The SOD activity was the highest while the MDA content was the lowest in the sun-dried green tea treatment (P<0.01). The MDA content of other treatments were highly decreased when compared with that of the control (P<0.01). Compared with the control, catalaes (CAT) activity were highly increased except that of the fourth pile-fermentation tea treatment (P<0.01). As to the total anti-oxidation capacity (T-AOC), it was significantly increased compared with that of the control (P<0.01), but decreased with the extents of pile-fermentation degree increasing. The sun-dried green tea treatment exhibited the strongest T-AOC (P<0.01). The study showed that the pile-fermentation process exerted significant effects on the antioxidative activity of Pu-erh tea.

Key words: Pu-erh tea, pile-fermentation, antioxidative enzyme, total antioxidation capacity, maleic dialdehyde