In my view, there could be two main areas closely tied to each other though.

(a) Tea production (growing/manufacturing), where sensors that could readily detect flavour related compounds could help enhance the final product. This could be either selection of plants for propagation cloning or quality control of the final product being sent to markets.

(b) Marketing and post production activities such as blending and packaging, where such sensors can provide at least a partial scientific basis for tea tasting and valuation processes.

These two are intrinstically related but the industry is governed by the market and it should be the area to concentrate on (ie (b)). For example, if tea tasters/blenders can be convinced to consider TF content or TF/TB ratio measurements as a parameter for valuation/blending activities that could change the whole picture and will be a big driver for development of sensors that can easily measure not only TF/TB, but precursor compounds in tea shoots.