Development of a Method for the Quantitative Detection of Honey in Imported Products.

摘要

The carbohydrate composition of Asian honeys was determined using analysis of per-O-trimethylsilylated sugar alditols by GC-FID. This method was established to detect the presence and quantify honey in imported products scheduled for investigation by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) Biosecurity, because the import of honey products is regulated. The Asian honeys analysed had a carbohydrate composition within the limits set for honey by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and had a disaccharide profile similar to honeys from elsewhere in the world. Kojibiose, and peaks corresponding to turanose/nigerose and turanose/maltulose, which are carbohydrates not common in nature, were present in all the honey samples analysed. A reference database of the sugar content of these honeys was created; and the presence of these disaccharides together in imported products under investigation would indicate that the product contains honey. Several samples were found to be adulterated, mostly with sucrose syrup and also with glucose syrup through improper bee-feeding. This method is suitable for detection of the presence of honey in a product being investigated but might encounter problems when quantitation of the honey at low levels of honey addition is required, due to the poor precision of the method. This low precision resulted from the difficulty in getting a homogeneous honey sample and quantifying the small or poorly resolved peaks in the chromatograms. A report on the analysis of actual samples supplied by MAF is presented in Appendix A; quantitation of the monosaccharides, the ratio of glucose:fructose and ratio of disaccharides to monosaccharides could be used to quantitate the amount of honey present and this method is recommended for future use.