Application of Common Components Analysis to Mid-Infrared Spectra for the Authentication of Lebanese Honey

Abstract

Honey is considered as a premium food produced by honeybees. It is highly appreciated by consumers around the world and raises a major concern nowadays which is ensuring its authenticity in respect to its production and its botanical origin. In Lebanon, honey is mainly multifloral which makes its authentication rather difficult. While mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis has proven to be successful in authenticating unifloral honey, the challenge with Lebanese honey lies in assessing its performance with multifloral honey. Therefore, this work aims to test the performance of common components analysis (CCA) applied on mid-infrared spectra in the authentication of multifloral Lebanese honey. For this purpose, 96 multifloral Lebanese honey samples of different floral sources were collected from different regions of the Lebanese territory and analyzed using MIR spectroscopy. CCA applied to the spectral data, allowed a separation between honeydew honey samples and floral honey samples. In addition, honey samples collected from the Bekaa plain region were differentiated from the other honey samples collected from all the other Lebanese geographical regions. This discrimination between the groups of honey samples is based essentially on their sugar composition.