Development of Fast Analytical Method for the Detection and Quantification of Honey Adulteration Using Vibrational Spectroscopy and Chemometrics Tools

Abstract

In this study, the Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-MIR) spectroscopy technique combined with chemometrics methods was used to monitor adulteration of honey with sugar syrup. Spectral data were recorded from a wavenumber region of 4000–600 cm−1, with a spectral resolution of 4 cm−1. Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were used for qualitative analysis to discriminate between adulterated and nonadulterated honey. For quantitative analysis, we used partial least-squares regression (PLS-R) and the support vector machine (SVM) to develop optimal calibration models. The use of PCA shows that the first two principal components account for 96% of the total variability. PCA and HCA allow classifying the dataset into two groups: adulterated and unadulterated honey. The use of the PLS-R and SVM-R calibration models for the quantification of adulteration shows high-performance capabilities represented by a high value of correlation coefficients R2 greater than 98% and 95% with lower values of root mean square error (RMSE) less than 1.12 and 1.85 using PLS-R and SVM-R, respectively. Our results indicate that FT-MIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics techniques can be used successfully as a simple, rapid, and nondestructive method for the quantification and discrimination of adulterated honey.