About
Rooibos tea is a caffein-free herbal infusion originating from South Africa. The plant, Aspalanthus Linearis, is also known as red bush an is an increasingly popular herbal tea globally. The leaf is processed to make either red tea, after a process of fermentation, or a green tea. The green rooibos tea is more laborious to prepare and is thus less common. The Rooibos bush is endemic to the Cederberg region of the Western Cape Province in South Africa.
Rooibos tea is known as beneficial to health and rich in antioxidants. Such properties are confirmed by scientific evidence. To do that, scientists measure the concentration of chemically active compounds in the tea itself. This project looks at the abundance of phenolic content and at the antioxidant capacity of the tea, and compares fermented rooibos tea leaves with unfermented (green) rooibos tea leaves. Two methods for infusing the chemicals are used – water and alcohol. The results are analysed using machine learning.
Reference
This hack is designed to reproduce the analysis of the rooibos tea samples as published in this paper: Hussein, E.A.; Thron, C.; Ghaziasgar, M.; Vaccari, M.; Marnewick, J.L.; Hussein, A.A. Comparison of Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activity for Fermented and Unfermented Rooibos Samples Extracted with Water and Methanol. Plants 2022, 11, 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11010016
Hack details
| Name | Rooibos Tea Classifier |
| Authors | Eslam Hussein, Chris Thron |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11010016 |
| GitHub | https://github.com/eahussein/rooibosTea_classification |
| Science | Chemistry |
| Skills | Visualization, Statistics |
| Techniques | Binary classification |
| Status | Active |
| Prerequisites |
