Recent advances in tea polysaccharides: Extraction, purification, physicochemical characterization and bioactivities.

Tea has a long history of medicinal and dietary use. Tea polysaccharide (TPS) is regarded as one of the main bioactive constituents of tea and is beneficial for health. Over the last decades, considerable efforts have been devoted to the studies on TPS: extraction, structural feature and bioactivity of TPS. However, it has been received much less attention compared with tea polyphenols. In order to provide new insight for further development of TPS in functional foods, in present review we summarize the recent literature, update the information and put forward future perspectives on TPS covering its extraction, purification, quantitative determination techniques as well as physicochemical characterization and bioactivities.