Identification of Stingless Bee Honey Adulteration Using Visible-Near Infrared Spectroscopy Combined with Aquaphotomics

Abstract

Honey is a natural product that is considered globally one of the most widely important foods. Various studies on authenticity detection of honey have been fulfilled using visible and near-infrared (Vis-NIR) spectroscopy techniques. However, there are limited studies on stingless bee honey (SBH) despite the increase of market demand for this food product. The objective of this work was to present the potential of Vis-NIR absorbance spectroscopy for profiling, classifying, and quantifying the adulterated SBH. The SBH sample was mixed with various percentages (10–90%) of adulterants, including distilled water, apple cider vinegar, and high fructose syrup. The results showed that the region at 400–1100 nm that is related to the color and water properties of the samples was effective to discriminate and quantify the adulterated SBH. By applying the principal component analysis (PCA) on adulterants and honey samples, the PCA score plot revealed the classification of the adulterants and adulterated SBHs. A partial least squares regression (PLSR) model was developed to quantify the contamination level in the SBH samples. The general PLSR model with the highest coefficient of determination and lowest root means square error of cross-validation (RCV2=0.96 and RMSECV=5.88 %) was acquired. The aquaphotomics analysis of adulteration in SBH with the three adulterants utilizing the short-wavelength NIR region (800–1100 nm) was presented. The structural changes of SBH due to adulteration were described in terms of the changes in the water molecular matrix, and the aquagrams were used to visualize the results. It was revealed that the integration of NIR spectroscopy with aquaphotomics could be used to detect the water molecular structures in the adulterated SBH.

Honey Quality and Microplastic Migration from Food Packaging: A Potential Threat for Consumer Health?

“…Additionally, Raman spectroscopy in combination with HPLC techniques was used for the verification of honey authenticity [134], aiming to create an authenticity pattern recognition analysis protocol [135]. Lately, honey adulterant and authenticity were studied with other spectroscopy methods, such as Visible-Nearinfrared spectroscopy [136], fluorescence spectroscopy, chemometrics [16], and UV-Vis spectroscopy [137]. Finally, machine learning algorithms combined with Raman spectroscopy is an expeditious growing field in food science, such as, for example, the study of adulterant in Suichang native honey [138].…”

Aquaphotomics—Exploring Water Molecular Systems in Nature

“…Out of the 21 published articles, 3 were reviews [ 2 , 3 , 4 ] and 18 were original research papers [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], that can be roughly separated into 6 categories ( Figure 3 ).…”

“…The majority of the articles, approximately one third, belongs to the field of applications in agriculture and food science [ 8 , 9 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 21 , 22 ], a field from which aquaphotomics originated, and probably the reason why this category is still at the forefront of aquaphotomics development. Following this category are the preprocessing and chemometrics [ 2 , 4 , 15 , 18 ] and fundamental studies [ 5 , 6 , 10 , 17 ].…”

“…Nevertheless, it is very encouraging to notice that the use of short wavelength NIR spectroscopy is gaining popularity. In this Issue, three papers reported the use of short wavelength NIR spectroscopy, in the approximate range of 750–1000 nm, where the 2nd and 3rd overtone of water are located [ 9 , 13 , 21 ]. Furthermore, two research groups presented the results, in parallel, for both the first overtone of water region and higher overtones, demonstrating increased efforts in gaining more clarity in the nature of information that can be gained from each of the regions, and attempts at defining WAMACs similar to the existing ones in the first overtone [ 23 ].…”

“…In the agricultural sector, aquaphotomics development in the area of food adulteration seem to be increasingly popular. Three papers in the Special Issue tackled challenges in food adulteration, specifically honey [ 8 , 21 ] and coffee [ 14 ]. While honey adulteration was a subject of investigations in several previous publications [ 33 , 34 , 35 ], the current ones contain two novelties.…”