DOI: https://doi.org/10.55373/mjchem.v25i3.173

Keywords: Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy; adulterated honey; principal component analysis; FTIR

Abstract

Recently, honey adulteration has become a global issue as this fraudulent activity has increased due to increasing consumer demand for honey. The adulterated honey may adversely affect consumers and lead to many chronic diseases due to its high sugar content. One simple and easy method to determine honey authenticity is by using diffuse reflectance spectroscopic (DRS) analysis. The instrumentation setup consists of a light source, fiber-optic contact probes, and a spectrometer connected to a computer. The reflectance value shows a linear relationship with the percentage of sucrose. Therefore, DRS analysis shows the potential to discriminate between pure, adulterated honey and different sucrose concentrations. The data set from DRS were further analysed by using principal component analysis (PCA) method. It shows that different types of honey at different locations in the PCA score plot proved that this technique could be used to determine honey types. The R2 values obtained were between 0.824 and 0.988. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) results show no significant difference between adulterated honey with different sucrose levels. However, FTIR results exhibit a difference between pure and adulterated honey.