Geographical and Botanical Classification of Honeys and Apicultural Products by Chemometric Methods. A Review

Abstract

Evaluations of adulteration, geographical and botanical origin of bee-products are matters of great interest worldwide. These trends are principally related to the international market of food commodities. The chemometric tools appear as new analytical complements which, in recent years, were successfully used to define the geographical and botanical origin of food raw materials or to detect possible adulterations. The classification can be possible using different analysis criteria, such as minor and trace elements, as well as sugars and other items by the chemometric analysis. This review contains a survey of the current multivariate methods published between January 1999 and February 2011, used for the classification and authentication of honey and other bee-products. References are ordered in a way to allow easy reading and further search. Keywords: Honey, geographical origin, botanical origin, bee products, pattern recognition methods, multivariate calibration, authenticity, physicochemical properties, botanical analysis, PDO