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The importance of honey adulteration detection has recently increased owing to the limited production levels in recent years and the relative high price of honey; therefore, this illegal practice has become more and more attractive to producers. Hence, the need has arisen for more effective analytical methods aiming at detecting honey adulteration. The present research presents an effective method to detect adulteration in honey falsified by intentional addition of different concentrations of commercial sugar syrups, using one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) coupled with multivariate statistical analysis. Sixty-three authentic and 63 adulterated honey samples were analyzed. To prepare adulterated honeys, seven different sugar syrups normally used for nutrition of bees were used. The best discriminant model was obtained by 1D spectra, and leave-one-out cross-validation showed a predictive capacity of 95.2%. 2D NMR also furnished acceptable results (cross-validation correct classification 90.5%), although the (1)H NMR sequence is preferable because it is the simplest and fastest NMR technique.

The composition and antioxidant activity of Italian poplar propolis obtained using three harvesting methods and extracted with different solvents were evaluated. Waxes, balsams, and resins contents were determined. Flavones and flavonols, flavanones and dihydroflavonols, and total phenolics were also analyzed. To characterize the phenolic composition, the presence of 15 compounds was verified through HPLC-MS/MS. The antioxidant activity was evaluated through 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical and reducing power assays. The ability of propolis to inhibit lipid oxidation was monitored by analyzing hydroperoxide and TBARS formation in lipids incorporated into an oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion. Acetone shows the highest extraction capacity. Wedge propolis has the highest concentration of active phenolic compounds (TP = 359.1 ± 16.3 GAEs/g; TFF = 5.83 ± 0.42%; TFD = 7.34 ± 1.8%) and seems to be the most promising for obtaining high-value propolis more suitable to prepare high-quality dietary supplements (TBARS = 0.012 ± 0.009 mmol std/g; RP = 0.77 ± 0.07 TEs/g).

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The importance of honey has been recently increased because of its nutrient and therapeutic effects, but the adulteration of honey in terms of botanical origin has increased, too. The floral origin of honeys is usually determined using melisso-palynological analysis and organoleptic characteristics, but the application of these techniques requires some expertise. A number of papers have confirmed the possibility of characterizing honey samples by selected chemical parameters. In this study high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (HR-NMR) and multivariate statistical analysis methods were used to identify and classify honeys of five different floral sources. The 71 honey samples (robinia, chestnut, citrus, eucalyptus, polyfloral) were analyzed by HR-NMR using both 1H NMR and heteronuclear multiple bond correlation spectroscopy (HMBC). Spectral data were analyzed by application of unsupervised and supervised pattern recognition and multivariate statistical techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) and general discriminant analysis (GDA). The use of 1H-(13)C HMBC coupled with appropriate statistical analysis seems to be an efficient technique for the classification of honeys.

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