Authentication of Apis cerana Honey and Apis mellifera Honey Based on Major Royal Jelly Protein 2 Gene.

Yan-Zheng Zhang,Cui-Ping Zhang,Shuai Wang,Fu-Liang Hu,Yi-Fan Chen,Juan-Juan Si,Huo-Qing Zheng,Yu-Qi Wu,Jing Tian

doi:10.3390/molecules24020289

Abstract

In Asia, honey is mainly produced by Apis mellifera and Apis cerana. However, the price of A. cerana honey is usually much higher than A. mellifera honey. Seeing considerable profits, some dishonest companies and beekeepers mislabel A. mellifera honey as A. cerana honey or incorporate A. mellifera honey into A. cerana honey. In the present study, we developed methods to discriminate A. cerana honey from A. mellifera honey based on the MRJP2 (major royal jelly protein 2) gene. Two pairs of species-specific primers were designed. The amplification products of A. cerana and A. mellifera were 212 and 560 bp, respectively. As little as one percent incorporation of A. mellifera honey in the mixture can be detected by duplex PCR. Additionally, another method based on the melt curve analysis using the same primers was also developed, allowing a rapid discrimination of real-time PCR product of different species. Our study shows that the entomological authentication of honey samples can be identified by nuclear genes other than mitochondrial genes and this extends the possibility of gene selection in identification. The authentication system we proposed could be a useful tool for discriminating A. cerana honey from A. mellifera honey.

Highlights

As a famous natural health product, honey is widely consumed around the world
Korean native honey (KNH) and European honey (EH) using duplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR). When we applied these primers on Chinese honey samples, we found that the Korean native honey primers are species-specific, while the European honey primers were not specific to A. cerana samples originated from China and the size of the amplified products of the two kinds of bees were the same
Despite degradation of the honey DNA used as template, the PCR was successful in all tested honey samples. These results demonstrated that our species-specific primers could be used to identify the entomological origin of the two kinds of honey, and it is feasible to detect the entomological origin of honey produced by A. cerana and A. mellifera based on the difference between their MRJP2 genes

Summary

Introduction

As a famous natural health product, honey is widely consumed around the world. Honey is one of the most frequently counterfeited natural health products [1]. The botanical, geographical, and entomological origin have great influence on the composition and price of honey. Honey frauds include adulteration of honey with sugar and syrups and mislabeling of floral origin and bee species [2,3,4,5]. With a growing demand for local and traditional products recently, the entomological origin of honey has received considerable attention in honey quality control. Honey bees are mainly classified into three major clusters: cavity-nesting bees (A. mellifera, A. cerana, A. koschevnikovi, A. nuluensis, and A. nigrocincta), giant bees (A. dorsata, A. laboriosa and A. binghami) and dwarf bees

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion