Detection of honey adulteration with starch syrup by high performance liquid chromatography

According to saccharide profile comparison between starch syrups and pure honeys analysed through high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a characteristic peak was found at 15.25 min retention time in HPLC chromatogram of syrup, but no peak was observed at the same retention time in chromatogram of pure honeys. This characteristic peak for syrup was identified as an overlapping peak of oligosaccharides with more than 5 degree of polymerisation (DP) based on HPLC chromatogram comparison between starch syrup and a series of standard mono-, di- and oligosaccharides of 3-7 DP. Additionally syrup content correlated linearly with the height of the characteristic peak of syrup under different slope in two ranges 2.5-7.5% and 10-100%, respectively. Therefore, the characteristic peak at 15.25 min retention time can serve as a syrup indicator in HPLC analysis of the adulterated honeys. This new HPLC method for honey adulteration detection was further applied in an authenticity inspection on more than 100 commercial honeys. In addition to the improved accuracy of honey adulteration detection, the proposed HPLC method was simple, low cost and easy practice for honey product quality control by government department considering the popularity of HPLC device and technology.