Aliphatic organic acids as promising authenticity markers of bracatinga honeydew honey

Abstract

This study aimed to differentiate bracatinga (Mimosa scabrella Bentham) honeydew honey (BHH) from blossom honeys and BHH intentionally adulterated, all of them from three harvests, associating data of aliphatic organic acids (AOA) determined by capillary electrophoresis and chemometric analyses. The profile and concentration of AOA in pure BHH were similar between harvests, but distinct from blossom honeys. Succinic, glycolic, glutaric, malic, acetic, gluconic, and lactic acids were responsible for the differentiation between these two types of honey since they were the dominant variables (r > 0.80) in the principal component analysis. Based on this, the classification and regression trees method was used to develop a classification model considering these AOA. The proposed method needed only six of these AOA and adequately classified all blossom honeys and almost all pure and adulterated BHH. Therefore, the proposed model proved to be promising and reliable for verifying authenticity and fraud detection in BHH.