In the last years, consumers are paying much more attention to natural medicines and principles, mainly due to the general sense that natural compounds are safe. On the other hand, there is a growing demand by industry for plants used in traditional medicine that could be incorporated in foods, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, or even pharmaceuticals. Glycyrrhiza glabra Linn. belongs to the Fabaceae family and has been recognized since ancient times for its ethnopharmacological values. This plant contains different phytocompounds, such as glycyrrhizin, 18β-glycyrrhetinic acid, glabrin A and B, and isoflavones, that have demonstrated various pharmacological activities. Pharmacological experiments have demonstrated that different extracts and pure compounds from this species exhibit a broad range of biological properties, including antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antioxidant, and antidiabetic activities. A few toxicological studies have reported some concerns. This review addresses all those issues and focuses on the pharmacological activities reported for G. glabra. Therefore, an updated, critical, and extensive overview on the current knowledge of G. glabra composition and biological activities is provided here in order to explore its therapeutic potential and future challenges to be utilized for the formulation of new products that will contribute to human well-being.

Honey is a highly consumed natural product, not only for its taste and nutritional value, but also for its health benefits. Owing to characteristics that are essentially or exclusively related to the specific region or particular local environment and flora, honey can be classified as a premium product generally perceived as a high-quality and valued product because of its desirable flavor and taste. Consequently, honey has been a target of adulteration through inappropriate/fraudulent production practices and mislabeling origin. Globally, authentication of honey covers 2 main aspects: the production, with main issues related to sugar syrup addition, filtration, thermal treatment, and water content; and the labeled origin (geographical and/or botanical) and "organic" provenance. This review addresses all those issues, focusing on the approaches to detect the different types of honey adulteration. Due to the complex nature of honey and to the different types of adulteration, its authentication has been challenging and prompted the development of several advanced analytical approaches. Therefore, an updated, critical, and extensive overview on the current and advanced analytical methods targeting markers of adulteration/authenticity, including nontarget fingerprint approaches will be provided. The most recent advances on molecular, chromatographic, and spectroscopic methodologies will be described, emphasizing their pros and cons for the identification of botanical and geographical origins.

Species identification in meat products has grown in interest in recent years since these foodstuffs are susceptible targets for fraudulent labelling. In this work, a real-time PCR approach based on SYBR Green dye was proposed for the quantitative detection of pork meat in processed meat products. For the development of the method, binary meat mixtures containing known amounts of pork meat in poultry meat were used to obtain a normalised calibration model from 0.1 to 25% with high linear correlation and PCR efficiency. The method revealed high specificity by melting curve analysis, being successfully validated through its application to blind meat mixtures, which confirmed its adequacy for pork meat determination. The fully applicability of the method was further demonstrated in commercial meat products, allowing verification of labelling compliance and identification of meat species in processed foods.

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Astringency and bitterness are organoleptic properties widely linked to tannin compounds. Due to their significance to food chemistry, the food industry, and to human nutrition and health, these tannins’ taste properties have been a line of worldwide research. In recent years, significant advances have been made in understanding the molecular perception of astringency pointing to the contribution of different oral key players. Regarding bitterness, several polyphenols have been identified has new agonists of these receptors. This review summarizes the last data about the knowledge of these taste properties perceived by tannins. Ultimately, tannins’ astringency and bitterness are hand-in-hand taste properties, and future studies should be adapted to understand how the proper perception of one taste could affect the perception of the other one.

a b s t r a c tHoney is a natural product highly consumed due its known association with health benefits. Monofloral honeys are perceived as better quality products, being the most appreciated by consumers, thus attaining higher market values. Therefore efficient tools are needed as alternatives to the classical microscopic analysis presently used for the botanical origin identification of honey. In the present work, the use of DNA-based methods for the botanical species identification of honey is proposed. For this purpose, five DNA extraction methods (the kits NucleoSpin Plant (methods A and B) and DNeasy Plant Mini Kit, and the in-house CTAB-based and Wizard methods) combined with three different sample pre-treatments were applied to four honey samples (3 monofloral honeys of Calluna vulgaris, Lavandula spp. and Eucalyptus spp. and one multifloral honey). The 15 DNA extraction protocols were compared in terms of DNA integrity, yield and purity, as well as capacity of amplification targeting universal and adh1 specific genes of C. vulgaris. The results demonstrated the superior efficacy of the Wizard method in terms of DNA quality and amplification capacity, when combined with the sample preparation treatment with a mechanical disruption step of pollen to improve DNA yield. Although with considerable lower DNA yields, the CTAB and DNeasy methods were also successful because both were able to clearly amplify heather DNA from the monofloral heather honey.

Honey can be produced by different species of honeybees, with two being of economic importance due to their use in apiculture, namely Apis mellifera (known as European honeybee) and Apis cerana (known as Asian honeybee). Due to the decline of the wild populations of the Asian honeybee, this honey generally attains much higher market value, being prone to adulteration. This work aims at proposing new tools, based on the use of molecular markers, for the entomological authentication of honey. To this end, new species-specific primers were designed targeting the tRNA-cox2 intergenic region and allowing the detection of A. cerana DNA by qualitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Additionally, a novel real-time PCR method with high resolution melting analysis was developed to target the 16S rRNA gene of both bee species, allowing their discrimination in different clusters. The proposed methodologies were further applied with success in the authentication of Asian and European honey samples by the identification of honeybee DNA, demonstrating the usefulness of these simple and cost-effective new approaches.

a b s t r a c tMonofloral honeys (such as, lavender honey) are highly appreciated by the consumers due to their flavour, taste and properties. However, since they are considered prime products, they are often targets of adulteration. This work exploits DNA barcoding combined with high resolution melting (HRM) analysis to establish the botanical origin of honey, using lavender honey as a case study. The plastidial matK gene was targeted as a candidate barcode for Lavandula species identification. The method allowed differentiating the species in three clusters with confidence levels >99%, being the results well correlated with the sequencing analysis. It was successfully applied to identify the botanical origin of several lavender honeys, which were grouped in the cluster of the most common species in Portugal (L. stoechas subsp., L. penduculata and L. viridis). The proposed method represents a simple, specific and cost-effective tool to authenticate the botanical origin of honey.