Sugars Profile of Citrus (Citrus spp.) Honey for Quality Determination

Rasha, A Farag Farag

doi:10.21608/eajbsa.2020.68963

Abstract

Honey is considered a broad nutritional substance with nutritional, vital and therapeutic value due to its distinctive ingredients. Therefore, the determination of its purity is of utmost importance. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of different feed types on sugars profiles of citrus honey. In this work, three types of foods presented to honey bee colonies were studied: invert sugar, sucrose solution and natural nectar. The honey produced from this feeding was characterized by equal levels of glucose and fructose in the case of invert sugar and high level of sucrose in the case of feeding with a solution of sucrose and the ideal composition for nectar of citrus trees that were represented in 42.1%, 35.5%, 0.9% and 1.6% for fructose, glucose, sucrose, and maltose, respectively. This provides a clear imprint of natural honey sugars (sugar profile), and opens the way for further research in this area to uncover ways of adulteration with honey

Highlights

There are many ways to adulteration honey in order to increase the profit by raising the produced quantity, especially with the types of honey with unique flavors, from Table (1) that showed the mean of sugars from three honey bee feeding type (Invert sugar, sucrose and pure honey)
Fructose record significant mean differences between all treatments 42.1±0.3, 37.9±1.2 and 28.4±0.7 for pure honey, sucrose solution and invert sugar respectively; glucose profile show a significant difference s between pure honey and both invert sugar and sucrose solution that record 28.3±2.7a and 27.7±2.8a respectively which are free of significant mean differences between them
The sucrose profile for three honey treatments was 10.4±0.6b, 1.8±1a and 0.9±0.2a for Sucrose solution treatment, Invert sugar treatment and pure honey respectively, with significant mean differences between them.For all feeding types treatment, there are no significant differences in the percentage of maltose sugar

Summary

Introduction

Citrus honey is one of the unifloral honey (ODDO et al, 2004); a citrus honey favorite for a large segment of honey consumers as a result of its distinctive flavor, as well as the wide geographical distribution of citrus cultivars worldwide Bee Honey as know that sweet substance from the nectar of plants and the most product famous between all bee products (Farag and Swaby, 2018), honey cost evaluated depend on different tastes and cultures of the customer.Beekeepers resort to feeding colonies of honey bees out honey flow seasons to keep it out of starvation and malnutrition; it may be included different types of sugars such as high fructose corn syrup, invert sugar and grape syrup (Seversonand and Erickson, 1984a&b) Nutrition on sucrose may lead to an imbalance in the bacteria located in the honey bee gut, and some strain of bacteria may increase two- to five-fold when bees were fed sucrose. Three types of foods presented to honey bee colonies were studied: invert sugar, sucrose solution and natural nectar.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion