[Qualitative and quantitative detection of beet syrup adulteration of honey by near-infrared spectroscopy: a feasibility study].

In order to further investigate the utility of near-infrared spectroscopys (NIRS) in rapidly detecting honey adulteration, near-infrared spectroscopy in combination with chemometric methods was investigated for qualitative and quantitative detection of beet syrup adulteration of honey. Total prediction accuracy of testing set was 90.2% by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) for authentic and adulterated honey samples. Total prediction accuracy of testing sets was all below 33.3% by different discriminant methods for classes of adulteration level. The quantitative analysis of adulteration level by PLS regression gave satisfying results if adulterated honey samples were got from the same one authentic honey sample: correlation coefficient (r)of actual values versus predicted values was 0.9829 and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) was 1.394 2 in testing set, otherwise it gave dissatisfying results for the adulterated samples from different botanical origins or the different samples of the same botanical origins. The results showed that NIRS could be applied for rapid detection of authentic and adulterated honey samples, but not for detection of classes of adulteration level and quantification of adulteration level with beet syrup.