Mineral content and electrical conductivity of the honeys produced in Northwest Morocco and their contribution to the characterisation of unifloral honeys

Abstract

AbstractIn this study the mineral content, ash content and electrical conductivity of 98 honey samples from Northwest Morocco were studied. Using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP‐AES), six minerals were identified and quantified: K, Mg, Mn, Cu, Fe and Zn. Potassium was the predominant mineral (accounting for 80% of the total minerals quantified), followed by Mg and Fe (9 and 3% respectively). The ash content values were lower than 0.6% in 95 of the samples. The higher electrical conductivity values corresponded to the honeydew honeys ( x = 1734 µS cm−1). In addition, characterisation of the main unifloral honeys by principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and multilayer perceptrons (MLP) was carried out. The PCA showed that the cumulative variance was approximately 67%. On the other hand, the LDA and MLP allowed perfect classification of the honeydew (100% correct classification) and Eucalyptus (92%) honeys.© 2003 Society of Chemical Industry