Discrimination between real and fake honey using portable fluorescence spectroscopy and simca

Abstract

In the commercial market, real honey and fake honey could not easily be differentiated. For this reason, recently there has been an increasing demand for honey authentication. In this work, we apply portable fluorescence spectroscopy and soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) method to discriminate real and fake honey available in the commercial market. To afford the price of authentication, an LED-based spectrometer at 365 nm excitation was developed. Three types of samples were used: 100 samples of real honey (Heterotrigona itama), 40 samples of fake honey, and 40 samples of HFCS-55 (high fructose corn syrup). Samples were diluted five times with distilled water. The fluorescence or emission spectra from 357 nm to 725.5 nm were obtained by exciting the samples at 365 nm LED lamps. The resolution of 0.5 nm was used. Identification of real honey, fake honey, and HFCS-55 could be well achieved using two principal components (PC1 and PC2). Real honey of Heterotrigona itama was clustered on the left of PC1. SIMCA was applied and the classification between real honey, fake honey, and HFCS-55 was well established with 100% accuracy could be obtained.