impact of adulteration with different sugar syrups on

22nd Conference “New Cryogenic and Isotope Technologies for Energy and Environment” - EnergEn 2018 Băile Govora, Romania, October 24 – 26, 2018

Impact Of Adulteration With Different Sugar Syrups On Honey Organic

Acids And Water-Soluble Vitamins

Corina Teodora Ciucure, Elisabeta-Irina Geană*

National R&D Institute for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies – ICIT Rm. Valcea, 4th Uzinei Street, PO

Raureni, Box 7, 240050 Rm. Valcea, Romania

*[email protected]

Honey is a high-value food product, which is composed mainly of sugars and water

together with many minor components with therapeutic potential such as organic acids,

vitamins, phenolic and volatile compounds, proteins, enzymes, etc (da Silva et al., 2016).

According to international standards, authentic honey is a natural product that should not

contain any added substances, such as sugar syrups. Due to its market value which is much

higher than other commonly utilized sweeteners, honey is a temptation for adulteration with

cheap industrial sweeteners, in order to obtain additional benefits (Amiry et al., 2017).

Detection of honey adulteration is not simple and for that numerous analytical methods were

proposed (Trifković et al., 2017).

This study investigated the impact of adulteration with different sugar syrups on

honey organic acids and water-soluble vitamins. For this purpose, different authentic honey

samples and adulterated honeys produced by direct incorporation of different percent of sugar

syrups in honey (5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50%) or produced by bees that had been fed

supplementary with sucrose syrup were analyzed.

UHPLC-DAD methods were used for organic acids and water soluble vitamins

fingerprinting, after the appropriate sample extraction procedures. Figure 1 shows the overlay of

10 ppm standard solution of organic acids (black) and pure polyfloral honey extract (blue)

chromatograms.

Figure 1. UHPLC chromatogram of organic acids in honey extract


Due to the fact that sugar syrups used for direct adulteration of honey do not contain organic

acids and vitamins, except lower quantities of oxalic and propionic acids, direct incorporation of sugar

syrups in honey or intensive bee feeding with sugar syrups has produced a decrease of these bioactive

compounds in honey, but, in most cases, in the natural range of variation for pure honeys.

Multicomponent analysis, which involves the analysis of numerous parameters is necessary

for quality control and authentication of honey. Quantification of the amount of added C4 sugar syrup

in honey must be done by standardised isotopic method (SCIRA).

Keywords: honey, sugar syrups, adulteration, organic acids, vitamins, UHPLC

Acknowledgements This work was performed within the framework of the research projects PN-III-P2-2.1-PED-2016-1656 –

“Alternative analytical approaches for detecting adulteration of honey with emphasis on its biologically active

compounds”, SAFE-HONEY, 194PED/2017, supported by the Romanian National Authority for Scientific

Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI.

References

Amiry, S., Esmaiili, M., Alizadeh, M., 2017. Classification of adulterated honeys by multivariate analysis. Food

Chem. 224, 390–397. doi:10.1016/J.FOODCHEM.2016.12.025

da Silva, P.M., Gauche, C., Gonzaga, L.V., Costa, A.C.O., Fett, R., 2016. Honey: Chemical composition,

stability and authenticity. Food Chem. 196, 309–323. doi:10.1016/J.FOODCHEM.2015.09.051

Trifković, J., Andrić, F., Ristivojević, P., Guzelmeric, E., Yesilada, E., 2017. Analytical Methods in Tracing

Honey Authenticity. J. AOAC Int. 100, 827–839. doi:10.5740/jaoacint.17-0142

impact of adulteration with different sugar syrups on

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