Developing a New Testing Methodology for Honey Authentication

Honey is a valuable and nutritious food product, and its popularity is increasing globally driven by consumers demand for a healthier and more sustainable diet. However, honey is at risk of fraudulent practices such as the addition of exogenous sugars in the form of cheaper plant-based syrups including corn, rice, and sugar beet syrup. Honey authentication is of the utmost importance, but existing methods are not sufficient to detect all types of sugar syrups used for adulteration and at present there is no single method for honey authenticity testing. The aim of this project was to investigate a) the suitability of Spatially offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS), a non-invasive technique used to acquire measurements through packaging, for detecting the type and percentage of exogenous sugar adulteration in honey and b) to develop DNA markers (DNA barcoding) to identify the presence of DNA from plant sources such as rice and sugar beet which are used for making sugar syrups used for honey adulteration.