Portable NIR Spectroscopy to Simultaneously Trace Honey Botanical and Geographical Origins and Detect Syrup...

Area of Science:

• Food Science
• Analytical Chemistry
• Spectroscopy

Background:

• Honey fraud, including origin misrepresentation and adulteration, is a significant global concern.
• There is a pressing need for simple, rapid, and reliable methods for honey authentication to ensure product quality and consumer trust.
• Existing methods may be complex or time-consuming, limiting their widespread application in routine quality control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a portable Fourier Transform Near-Infrared (FTNIR) spectroscopy approach combined with chemometrics for honey authentication.
• To simultaneously assess honey traceability (botanical and geographical origin) and detect adulteration with common sugar syrups.
• To provide a feasible solution for rapid and accurate honey quality assessment.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a robust dataset of 244 multifloral and unifloral honey samples from Spain and Sardinia (Italy).
• Employed portable FTNIR fingerprinting coupled with chemometric techniques, including Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression.
• Developed qualitative models for origin discrimination and quantitative models for adulterant detection.

Main Results:

• Accurately predicted botanical and geographical origins with 90% and 95% accuracy, respectively.
• LDA models achieved over 92% accuracy in discriminating pure from adulterated honey samples.
• PLS regression enabled accurate quantification of adulterants, detecting over 10% in unifloral and 20% in multifloral honey.

Conclusions:

• Portable FTNIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics is a powerful and feasible tool for honey authentication.
• The developed method effectively addresses both honey traceability and adulterant detection, offering a comprehensive solution.
• This approach has significant potential for routine quality control, safeguarding consumers against honey fraud.