Wroclaw. The scientist is going to investigate the falsification of honey and establish a way to check its composition

The most famous practices of adulteration of honey include, for example, the addition of various kinds of substances that enrich the taste and aroma, In addition to reducing production costs and substituting raw materials for other equivalents, often of lower quality.

fake honey

Jordan Sycz, a PhD student at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, wants to take a closer look at the methods of adulteration of natural honey in order to develop simple methods to verify its chemical composition and geographical origin.. For the project “Analysis of Adulteration of the Chemical Composition and Geographical Origin of Natural Honey from Poland and Europe in Relation to Enriched and Herbal Honeys Using Chromatographic Techniques Combined with Mass Detection” he received a grant from the National Research Center amounting to approximately PLN 210,000. zlotys.

The chemical composition of natural honey may vary according to climate, environmental conditions, production method, or the type of raw material from which it is made. Unfortunately, we often deal with unfair market practices, “It basically consists of enriching natural honey with other ingredients, often of synthetic origin, or deliberately masking its botanical origin in order to increase the unit price of the final product,” Jordan Six said in the statement.

in his opinion, Methods of adulteration of food are becoming more sophisticated and sophisticated, and the chemical complexity of honey matrices makes it difficult to detect subtle changes in its composition.

“Lately, there has been a lot of talk about Rich Honey fraud. This includes herbal honeys, where instead of the bees’ naturally collected honey, the bees are fed sugar syrup, herbal hydrolyzate added or essential oils isolated from oil-bearing plants. This creates great scope for falsifying the composition of natural honey and makes it difficult to determine the botanical and geographical origin. both , It happens that pollen from another plant is deliberately added to such honey to make it difficult to identify it. Sycz said.

Honey tested at every stage of production

the world will Examination of changes in the chemical composition of honey at each stage of its production and processing by bees, differences in honey volatile profiles and adulteration detection in complex matrices of fertilized and herbal honeys.

The project also aims to provide comprehensive knowledge about the so-called identification compounds and their specific chemical profiles, allowing a comprehensive analysis of adulteration not only in the final product, but also in the production stage, i.e. in honey bees. (pollen, nectar, honeydew). The following will be analysed: Honey is often affected by fraudulent forgery practices, such as rapeseed, heather, buckwheat, honeydew, acacia, golden, phacelia and linden honey.

“The culmination of the research will be the preparation of a sensory panel in which the correlation of the effect of selected volatile compounds on the taste and aroma of authentic natural honey, enriched honey and herbal honey will be examined” – said the researcher.

Author: Roman Skiba

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