Laser Chemistry Research Group, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Complutense University of Madrid, Plaza de Ciencias 1, 28040 Madrid, Spain; Analytical Chemistry Department, FCNET, University of Panama, Ciudad Universitaria, Estafeta Universitaria, 3366, Panama 4, Panama City, Panama.
National Centre for Environmental Health. Carlos III Health Institute, Ctra. Majadahonda-Pozuelo km 2.2, 28220, Majadahonda, Madrid, Spain.
Talanta. 2023 Dec 1;265:124768. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.124768. Epub 2023 Jun 10.
The European Union Publications Office has recently presented a report on the European Union's coordinated action with the Joint Research Centre to determine certain fraudulent practices in the honey sector, in which it has been indicated that 74% of the samples analyzed, imported from China, and 93% of the samples analyzed, imported from Turkey, the two largest honey producers worldwide, presented at least one indicator of exogenous sugar or suspicion of being adulterated. This situation has revealed the critical state of the problem of honey adulteration worldwide and the need to develop analytical techniques for its detection. Even though the adulteration of honey is carried out in a general way with sweetened syrups derived from C4 plants, recent studies have indicated the emerging use of syrups derived from C3 plants for the adulteration of honey. This kind of adulteration makes it impossible to analyze its detection using official analysis techniques. In this work, we have developed a fast, simple, and economical method based on the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy technique, with attenuated total reflectance, for the qualitative, quantitative, and simultaneous determination of beetroot, date, and carob syrups, derived from of C3 plants; whose available bibliography is very scarce and analytically not very conclusive for its use by the authorities. The proposed method has been based on the establishment of the spectral differences between honey and the mentioned syrups at eight different points in the spectral region between 1200 and 900 cm of the mid-infrared, characteristic of the vibrational modes of carbohydrates in honey, which allows the pre-discrimination of the presence or absence of the syrups studied, and their subsequent quantification, with precision levels lower than 2.0% of the relative standard deviation and relative errors lower than 2.0% (m/m).
欧盟出版办公室最近发布了一份报告，介绍了欧盟与联合研究中心协调行动，以确定蜂蜜行业的某些欺诈行为。报告指出，从中国进口的 74%的样本和从全球最大的两个蜂蜜生产国土耳其进口的 93%的样本，至少有一个外源性糖的指标或涉嫌掺假。这种情况揭示了全球蜂蜜掺假问题的严重程度，需要开发分析技术来检测。尽管蜂蜜的掺假通常是用来自 C4 植物的加糖糖浆进行的，但最近的研究表明，越来越多地使用来自 C3 植物的糖浆来掺假蜂蜜。这种掺假使得使用官方分析技术来检测变得不可能。在这项工作中，我们开发了一种基于傅里叶变换红外光谱技术的快速、简单、经济的方法，采用衰减全反射技术，定性、定量和同时测定甜菜、枣和角豆糖浆，这些糖浆均来自 C3 植物；其可用文献非常稀缺，而且其在官方的使用分析上也不是非常明确。所提出的方法基于在中红外光谱区域 1200 至 900 cm 之间的八个不同点建立蜂蜜和所述糖浆之间的光谱差异，这是蜂蜜中碳水化合物振动模式的特征，允许预先区分是否存在研究中的糖浆，以及随后的定量，精度水平低于 2.0%的相对标准偏差和低于 2.0%的相对误差（m/m）。
