Background: Camellia sinensis L.(CS) is a perennial evergreen species of plant whose leaves are used to produce tea. In this plant species, the parts used are the leaves, sub-branch parts are thrown out. Methods and Results: Ethanol extract of sub-branch parts was used for isolation of major compounds by column chromatography. Structures were identified as caffeine (1), (-)-epicatechin (2) and (-)-epicatechin gallate (3) by interpretation of spectroscopic analysis, including 1H- and 13C-NMR. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was used to compare the quantitative level of marker compounds in various extraction solvents of sub-branch parts of CS. The content of caffeine, (-)-epicatechin, and (-)- epicatechin gallate in 30% ethanol extract showed higher value with 3.28 ± 0.57 ㎎/g, 5.53 ± 0.88 ㎎/g, and 1.29 ± 0.24 ㎎/g, respectively. Conclusions: These results indicated that not only leaves parts but also sub-branch, could be a good source for the functional material and pharmaceutical industry.

This study takes another look at a moot problem in the analysis of Korean sub-compounds, where the second component nouns are y-initial nouns, with n/Ø alternation between two nouns. There have been two opposing approaches to this alternation: one for an /n/-insertion solution and the other for an /n/-deletion solution. However, each approach has left behind some data unaccounted for. Drawing on what is observed in Han (1994), we present another analysis to this n/⌽ alternation in a constraint-based framework of Optimality Theory. Our suggestion is that an underlying /n/ should be posited for some nouns, but not for all nouns uniformly. We argue that regardless of native Korean or Sino-Korean combinations, /n/-Insertion applies to y-initial components, only when the first components are prosodic stems. Some exceptions result from the weakening of a stem boundary, which is related with variables such as the number of syllables and the combining force or semantic relationship between the two components, and frequency effects of sub-compounds. The boundary status of the first components is shown to play a pivotal role in deciding that of the following components, backed by the condition that sisters in prosodic structure be of the same type.