Classification and identification of Vietnamese honey using chemometrics based on 1H-NMR data

Abstract

Honey is a natural, sweet, and syrupy fluid which has been used in Vietnam in a variety of ways; as a food supplement, beauty product, and natural drug. However, quality control and characterization of honey are blind problems. Consumers, and even market management committees, must believe in the producer’s quality standards without using any special techniques to evaluate the botanical origins of honey in the Vietnamese market. The chemical composition and physical properties of natural honey vary per plant species of which the honey bees scrounged. Longan flower-honey has a high price and is commercially produced in Yen Bai, Bac Giang, and the more well-known Hung Yen Province in Vietnam, and now is being confused with original flower honey. In this work, a total of 57 honey samples (longan and non-longan) from different geographic and botanical origins have been analysed in terms of ¹H-NMR spectroscopy, coupled also with multivariate statistical analysis methods. Principal component analysis followed by icoshift algorithm analysis comes about as a proficient device in recognising ¹H-NMR spectra of longan honey samples.