Traditional She medicine is part of China’s cultural heritage and has become remarkably popular worldwide. The Shi-Liang tea is made from the processed leaves of Chimonanthus salicifolius S. Y. Hu and Chimonanthus zhejiangensis M. C. Liu. To ensure the safety and efficacy of Shi-Liang tea, we used DNA barcoding based on the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of nuclear ribosomal DNA to distinguish the original plant sources of Shi-Liang tea from closely related species. All 71 ITS2 sequences were aligned by Clustal-W, and genetic distances were computed using MEGA 6.0 according to the Kimura 2-parameter model. The results indicated that the sequence lengths of ITS2 regions of the original plants of Shi-Liang tea and closely related species ranged from 256 bp to 260 bp. Interspecific genetic distances ranged from 0 to 0.078. The neighbor-joining (NJ) tree showed that the original plants of Shi-Liang tea species can be easily differentiated from closely related species. Distinct molecular differences were found between the secondary structures of ITS2 sequences from Shi-Liang tea and closely related species. The results in the present investigation suggested that the ITS2 could be an effective DNA marker to identify the original plants of Shi-Liang tea and their closely related species. These DNA barcodes can greatly benefit the supervision of the commercial circulation of She medicine.

To reduce the environmental impact of plastic packaging in the fruit supply chain, this study developed an edible natural CH-CS-EGCG coating (collagen hydrolysate-chitosan-epigallocatechin gallate) for mango preservation. The coating was prepared using an optimized CH:CS mass ratio of 1:4 with 3 wt% EGCG, exhibiting enhanced mechanical properties and low water vapor permeability. SEM and FT-IR analyses confirmed the successful incorporation of EGCG into the CH-CS matrix through hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic interactions, and electrostatic forces. The CH-CS-EGCG coating demonstrated superior antioxidant activity: its ABTS radical scavenging capacity and DPPH scavenging capacity were 234% and 422% higher, respectively, than those of the CH-CS coating. It also effectively inhibited bacterial growth, achieving a 92% inhibition rate against Staphylococcus aureus after 24 h of incubation. When applied to mango preservation, the CH-CS-EGCG coating significantly slowed down fruit decay and deterioration, extending the shelf life by 6 days. The CH-CS-EGCG coating offers a promising eco-friendly alternative for fruit preservation, broadening the applications of EGCG and advancing research in edible coatings.