Bioactive compounds evaluation in different types of Czech and Slovak honeys

Eva Volaří­ková,Lukáš Snopek,Soňa Škrovánková,Jiří­ Mlček

doi:10.5219/1025

Eva Volaříková, Lukáš Snopek + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.5219/1025

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Abstract

Honey contains important bioactive compounds (enzymes, phenolic compounds, vitamins, and minerals) with several positive health effects for humans. In the study six types of honey (acacia, rape, floral, multi flower, forest, and honeydew honeys), of Czech and Slovak origin, were evaluated for bioactive compounds by means of color, polyphenols and antioxidant capacity analyses. The brightest color of honeys, the lowest values measured spectometrically, had acacia and rape honeys, followed by floral, and darker multi flower and forest honeys, and honeydew honeys. Polyphenols (PP) amount, determined by spectrophotometric method with Folin-Ciocalteu reagent, was highest for the darkest honeydew honeys, followed by multi flower and forest honey, brighter floral honeys, and rape and acacia honey. Honeys polyphenols were in the range from 54.0 to 254.2 mg GAE.100g-1. The total antioxidant capacity (TAC) was analyzed by spectrometric methods with ABTS and DPPH reagents. Antioxidant capacity values are in agreement with the PP contents order. They were highest also for honeydew honeys (59.2 - 89.6 and 73.1 - 118.7 mg TE.100g-1), followed by multi flower (66.0 and 56.7 mg TE.100g-1) and forest honey (56.0 and 49.1 mg TE.100g-1), then floral honeys (33.0 - 49.2 and 27.8 - 38.7 mg TE.100g-1) and the lowest values for rape (19.0 and 28.1 mg TE.100g-1) and acacia (15.5 and 11.3 mg TE.100g-1)honey. A positive correlation between color, PP amount and TAC was evaluated for analyzed honeys. Darker honey samples showed higher values of phenolic compounds and antioxidant potential, therefore they belong to the honey types with higher amount of bioactive compounds such as antioxidants.

Highlights

Honey could be generally defined as foodstuff containing mainly sugars, monosaccharides fructose and glucose that form about 70% of sugar content, and about 10% of oligosaccharides
Honey has several positive health effects for humans. They are related to their bioactive compounds such as enzymes, phenolic compounds, vitamins and some minerals
Honeys with the best polyphenols content and antioxidant capacity values evaluated by both methods are honeydew honeys, the darkest ones

Summary

Introduction

Honey could be generally defined as foodstuff containing mainly sugars, monosaccharides fructose and glucose that form about 70% of sugar content, and about 10% of oligosaccharides (disaccharides and trisaccharides; sucrose, maltose, turanose, isomaltose, maltulose, trehalose, nigerose, kojibiose and trisaccharides maltotriose and melezitose). As Miguel et al (2017) mentioned honey is an effective nutraceutical foodstuff and its biological activity is mainly dependent on honey's floral or geographic origin. Honey could be defined as product of honey bees (Apis mellifera) as a nectar of flowers, flowering plants, they are floral honeys; unifloral if they are produced from the nectar of one type of flowers; or multifloral. They could be non-floral, honeydew honeys, which are from honeydew (secretion), a sugar-rich substance secreted by various animals such as secretions of aphids plant sucking insects (Pita-Calvo and Vázquez, 2017). Even nectar honeys from the same floral origin can vary in their chemical composition

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