Honey Quality Evaluation and a Case Study on Effect of Jaggery Adulteration using Spectral Techniques

摘要

Honey is an ancient valuable food and in most cases has enchanted its consumers by its medic characteristics. Consumption of honey is very large due to its nutritious and therapeutic properties, which results in enhanced cost of honey as compared with other sweeteners and it becomes prone to adulteration. Honey is mainly adulterated with cheaper sweetening materials such as refined cane sugar, beet sugar, Jaggery and corn syrup. Different chemicals that used for Jaggery making are lime (calcium oxide), sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, super phosphate and potassium alum crystal. Also use of other chemicals in juice format during Jaggery preparation results a harmful chemical like SO_2 and affects the taste of the Jaggery. In this paper the effect of Jaggery adulteration in honey is studied using spectral techniques.