Characterisation of honey produced from different fruit plants of northern India

Abstract

Studies were carried out to determine the affect of different fruit plant sources viz., Litche chinensis (litchi), Citrus sinensis (sweet orange), Ziziphus mauritiana (ber) and Prunus persica (peach) on moisture content, pH, free acidity, reducing sugars and sucrose contents, fructose ⁄ glucose ratio, ash and proline content, invertase and diastase activities, hydroxymethylfurfural and mineral (sodium, potassium, iron, calcium, zinc, and copper) contents as well as on rheological properties of honey. The source of honey had a significant (P < 0.05) effect on moisture content, free acidity, reducing sugar, fructose ⁄ glucose ratio, hydroxymethylfurfural content, invertase and diastase activities, sucrose content, proline content, ash content, pH and mineral content. The honey from various sources exhibited Newtonian behaviour and the activation energy ranged from 63.63 to 81.48 kJ mol )1 . Pattern recognition methods such as principal component analysis andlinear discriminate analysis were performed to classify honey on the basis of physico-chemical properties and mineral content. The variables proline, potassium and free acidity exhibited higher discrimination power.

Physico-chemical, Enzymatic, Mineral and Colour Characterization of Three Different Varieties of Honeys from Kashmir Valley of India with a Multivariate Approach

“…Honeys produced in India from various unifl oral sources as well as from commercial honeys were already studied by various authors [Ahmed et al, 2007;Nanda et al, 2009;Saxena et al, 2010]. After successful studies of characterisation of quality parameters of Eucalyp-tus, Brassica, Helianthus, L. chinensis, Z. mauritiana, C. sinensis and P. persica [Nanda et al, 2003[Nanda et al, , 2006[Nanda et al, , 2009], the present study was undertaken, not only to study the physico-chemical parameters, mineral content, enzymatic analysis and colour characteristics from three different varieties from Kashmir valley of India viz. acacia honey, pine honeydew and multifl oral honey but also to perform pattern recognition methods by using PCA and LDA to classify honey varieties which has never been performed till now.…”

“…The physicochemical characterisation of different honeys from different parts of the world has been carried out extensively [Azeredo et al, 2003;Finola et al, 2007;Ouchemoukh et al, 2007]. Honeys produced in India from various unifl oral sources as well as from commercial honeys were already studied by various authors [Ahmed et al, 2007;Nanda et al, 2009;Saxena et al, 2010]. After successful studies of characterisation of quality parameters of Eucalyp-tus, Brassica, Helianthus, L. chinensis, Z. mauritiana, C. sinensis and P. persica [Nanda et al, 2003[Nanda et al, , 2006[Nanda et al, , 2009], the present study was undertaken, not only to study the physico-chemical parameters, mineral content, enzymatic analysis and colour characteristics from three different varieties from Kashmir valley of India viz.…”

Geographical discrimination of honeys through antioxidant capacity, mineral content and colour

“…On the other hand, the content of Na and K was lower than values reported by Nanda et al . (). It must be considered that most samples analysed in the present work correspond to light honeys, which contain lower mineral levels that dark honeys (Vanhanen et al ., ).…”

Direct Analysis of Dark Honeys for Total Content of Copper and Its Fractionation Forms

“…For measurements of very low concentrations of this metal in honey (<0.1 mg kg −1 ), a more sensitive technique is required, and this is the case of atomic absorption spectrometry with electrothermal atomization (Vinas et al 1997). Typically dry ashing or wet ash digestions are used for that purpose (Baroni et al 2009;Nanda et al 2009;Dag et al 2006). Curiously, direct analysis of honey, including only simple dissolving of samples in water, is quite occasional (Soares dos Santos et al 2008;Hernandez et al 2005;LopezGarcia et al 1999) even though such kind of analysis offers a reduced sample preparation time and a lower risk of losing measured elements or contaminating samples with impurities.…”