Detection and quantification of honey adulteration via direct incorporation of sugar syrups or bee-feeding: preliminary study using high-performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD) and chemometrics Original Res

Honey adulteration is a complex problem which currently has a significant economic impact and undeniable nutritional and organoleptic consequences. This paper describes the development of an effective anionic chromatographic method (HPAEC-PAD) for honey analysis and adulteration detection. The method relies on the use of chemometric methods to process chromatograms in order to achieve a better discrimination between authentic and adulterated honeys by linear discriminant analysis and to quantify adulteration levels by partial least squares analysis. This approach was investigated using honey samples adulterated from 10 to 40% with various industrial bee-feeding sugar syrups. Good results were obtained in the characterization of authentic and adulterated samples (96.5% of good classification) using linear discriminant analysis followed by a canonical analysis. The application of the partial least squares modeling method provided a corresponding linear regression model allowing the percentage of adulteration of new samples to be estimated directly from sample chromatograms.