Sugar profile in monofloral honeys from China: Implications for quality control

Honey is primarily composed of sugars, with their profiles governing its quality. Twelve types of sugars in 784 honey samples, including 20 types of Chinese monofloral honeys, were accurately quantified by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with evaporative light scattering detection. Turanose (1.48 ± 0.63 g/100 g) was the most abundant oligosaccharide, followed by maltose (1.33 ± 0.43 g/100 g), and erlose (0.96 ± 0.80 g/100 g) was the predominant trisaccharide. Using unsupervised clustering, these honey samples were segmented into three clusters: high-oligosaccharide (e.g., jujube and fennel honey), high-glucose and low-oligosaccharide (e.g., rape, lychee and rubber honeys) and moderate-oligosaccharide clusters. The correlation analysis revealed strong correlations among turanose, maltulose, kojibiose and isomaltose, suggesting co-transformation among these sugars during honey ripening process and guiding future research directions. This study elucidated the sugar profile characteristics of Chinese honey, laying the foundation for enhancing its quality.