Use of EDXRF elemental fingerprinting for discrimination of botanical and geographical origin of Slovenian bee pollen

Abstract

Bee pollen contains proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, fats, fatty acids, vitamins, polyphenols, and mineral nutrients that make it useful as a good nutritional supplement in the human diet. It has the richest elemental composition among bee products which is not uniform and consequently varies greatly depending on botanical and geographical origin. In polyfloral and selected monofloral bee pollen samples: sweet chestnut, maple, dandelion, rapeseed, flowering ash, buckwheat, common ivy, and plantain, the concentrations of P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Mn, Fe, Zn, Br, Rb, and Sr were determined. A non‐destructive energy dispersive X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry was used for elemental fingerprinting. The most abundant elements in Slovenian bee pollen are K, P, S, Ca, and Cl followed by Fe, Mn, Zn, Rb, Br, and Sr. Several statistically significant differences in the content of analysed elements were found between studied groups according to the botanical and geographical origin which can be related to soil and plant elemental composition and plant metabolism. The obtained data extend our previous chemical profiling of Slovenian bee pollen and contribute to a more precise evaluation of some essential mineral nutrients in bee pollen to cover recommended dietary allowances in human nutrition. Additionally, this work contributes to a better understanding of mineral nutrient requirements in honey bee nutrition and of the environmental and agricultural impact of this product.

Mineral composition of bee pollen and its relationship with botanical origin and harvesting period

“…These tendencies were observed for each hive, and maximum values were in most cases related to monofloral bee pollen. A similar scenario was observed in previous studies conducted in other countries (see Supplementary Material, Table 5S; Lilek et al, 2021;Taha and Al Kahtani, 2020;Costa et al, 2019;Altunatmaz et al, 2017;Sattler et al, 2016;Taha, 2015;Yang et al, 2013;Somerville and Nicol, 2002), as P and K were the predominant elements, followed by Ca, Mg and Na. However, the concentrations detected in the present study were slightly lower than in the previous ones.…”

PCA and LDA Assessment of the Heavy Metal Contamination in Honey Bees, Bee Pollen and Honey Produced in Urban Areas of Türkiye

“…It has been determined that the origins can be separated successfully (Ares et al, 2022a;Ares et al, 2022b). According to Lilek et al (2022), as a result of PCA and Da analysis for the 11 metal contents of bee pollen samples taken from 4 different regions of Slovenia, bee pollen samples could be successfully separated by LDA according to their geographical origins.…”

Special issue on biological and biomedical applications of X‐ray spectrometry

“…In this Special Issue, we have selected case studies depicting the potential of X‐ray spectrometry techniques to provide insight on the characterization and study of biological samples. Lilek et al 1 used Energy Dispersive X Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) to gauge the origin of bee pollen while Nguli et al 2 studied essential micronutrient in beans using Total reflection X‐ray Fluorescence (TXRF). TXRF is a special XRF technique that brings further advantages to the analysis of biological samples due to the lower achieved Limits of Detection.…”