Molecular Tracing of the Origin of Six Different Plant Species in Bee Honey Using Real-Time PCR.

Abstract

The quality of honey is significantly influenced by floral origin. Mislabeling floral species occurs frequently in bee honey products. To protect consumers from economic fraud and maintain a fair market environment, methods to identify floral species in honey are necessary. In our study, real-time PCRs were established, targeting six honey types mainly produced in China (canola, Chinese milkvetch, Chinese chaste tree, locust tree, litchi, and longan). Sensitivity testing on DNA from plant tissues exhibited LODs of about 0.5-5 pg/μL. For DNA extracts of pollen sediments from different honey species, LODs ranged from 13.6 to 403.2 pg/μL. In an experiment to determine the practical LODs of honey in which adulterant honey was spiked in the genuine honey, adulterant honey as low as about 0.1-0.5% was detected in 90-100% in 10 parallel tests. Additionally, pollen was spiked in the honey and stored under various conditions to investigate the migration of pollen DNA into the honey supernatant. Finally, the efficiency of our method was investigated by testing honey samples of unknown compositions from different geographic regions. Of the 159 honey samples that were supposed to be monofloral that had been collected in five provinces, a small portion were found to be contaminated with foreign pollen (7%). The methods proved to be specific, sensitive, and reliable in identifying the six plant species in honey, which would be a useful tool during the market supervision and QC of honey products.