Honey Evaluation Using Electronic Tongues: An Overview

Abstract

Honey-rich composition in biologically active compounds makes honey a food products highly appreciated due to the nutritional and healthy properties. Food-manufacturing is very prone to different types of adulterations and fraudulent labelling making it urgent to establish accurate, fast and cost-effective analytical techniques for honey assessment. In addition to the classical techniques (e.g., physicochemical analysis, microscopy, chromatography, immunoassay, DNA metabarcoding, spectroscopy), electrochemical based-sensor devices have arisen as reliable and green techniques for food analysis including honey evaluation, allowing in-situ and on-line assessment, being a user-friendly procedure not requiring high technical expertise. In this work, the use of electronic tongues, also known as taste sensor devices, for honey authenticity and assessment is reviewed. Also, the versatility of electronic tongues to qualitative (e.g., botanical and/or geographical origin assessment as well as detection of adulteration) and quantitative (e.g., assessment of adulterants levels, determination of flavonoids levels or antibiotics and insecticides residues, flavonoids) honey analysis is shown. The review is mainly focused on the research outputs reported during the last decade aiming to demonstrate the potentialities of potentiometric and voltammetric multi-sensor devices, pointing out their main advantages and present and future challenges for becoming a practical quality analytical tool at industrial and commercial levels.

Characterization of Sicilian Honeys Pollen Profiles Using a Commercial E-Tongue and Melissopalynological Analysis for Rapid Screening: A Pilot Study

“…Several authors had already achieved honey classification with different E-tongue technologies [ 8 , 12 , 16 , 33 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 65 , 66 ]. Traditional physicochemical parameters used to discriminate between different botanical origins are: (i) electrical conductivity; (ii) mineral composition; and (iii) pH.…”

Use of the electronic tongue as a tool for the characterization of Melipona scutellaris Latreille honey

“…Thus, the e-tongue analysis, a simple method based on metallic potentiometric electrodes, may be useful as a complementary tool to the traditional methods used for honey analyses. In addition, the PCA and the Cluster Analysis are important tools to recognize different patterns between honeys (Escriche et al, 2012;Ulloa et al, 2013;Veloso et al, 2018;Wei et al, 2009).…”

“…The e-tongue was designed especially for flavor analyses; however, it has applications in several industries, such as the pharmaceutical, food, and beverage (Latha & Lakshmi, 2012). This e-tongue analysis provides a general signal profile representative of the sample analyzed, allowing to correlate with qualitative and quantitative information obtained from traditional analyses, such as the physicochemical analyses (Dias et al, 2015;Ha et al, 2015;Juan-Borr as et al, 2017;Veloso et al, 2018). In addition, the simplified procedure of sample preparation is one of the main advantages of this analytical technique, as it does not require the use of chemical products (Major et al, 2011).…”

Electrochemical Sensor-Based Devices for Assessing Bioactive Compounds in Olive Oils: A Brief Review

“…These drawbacks may be partially overcome by implementing drift correction procedures, calibration standardization and calibration update techniques. So, as recently pointed out by Veloso et al [172] the most relevant challenges in the near future include the capability to design sensor devices able to deliver repeatable electrical or electrochemical signal responses, negligible ageing and temperature effects, as well as a limited or null irreversible binding of substances on the materials used as sensing units. The capacity of overcoming these main drawbacks would allow a broader commercial use of these fast, cost-effective, and user-friendly green analytical devices.…”