Differentiation and classification of Australian single botanical origin honeys using spatially offset Raman...

Food authentication has gained significant interest in recent years due to the rising incidence of fraud in the food industry. Honey is frequently subjected to fraudulent practises and is currently one of the most adulterated food items. As a result, authentication methods are essential to ensure the integrity and authenticity of honey products. Here, spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) was investigated as a potential analysis method to identify the botanical origin of commercially available Australian honey products in their original packaging. The resulting spectra were similar between samples, however there are subtle differences among samples of different botanical origin which allow for clear differentiation. Using PCA-LDA, the botanical origin of different honey was able to be discriminated with an accuracy of 100 % and 90.82 % for processed and unprocessed honey samples, respectively. This highlights the potential of SORS as an effective method to rapidly authenticate the botanical origins of honey.