Identification of insect sources of honey in China based on real-time fluorescent LAMP technology

Abstract

The main insect sources of Chinese honey are Apis cerana and Apis mellifera. A. cerana honey has a higher nutritional value; therefore, its price is invariably several times higher than that of A. mellifera honey. Driven by economic interests, low-priced A. mellifera honey is often misrepresented as the more valuable A. cerana honey. In this study, Apis Major Royal Jelly Protein 2 (MRJP2) was used as the target gene to design specific primers for two bee species, a rapid real-time fluorescent LAMP method was established, and the specificity and sensitivity of this method were analyzed. Results showed that this method could effectively distinguish between the A. cerana and A. mellifera honey. The detection sensitivity of the A. cerana honey and A. mellifera honey primers were 4 ng/μL and 1 ng/μL, respectively. Eight commercially available honey samples were tested with the method developed in this study, and four adulterated honey samples were identified. The detection method proposed in this study may improve the quality of and safety measures for honey.