Melissopalinological study of Sicilian honey by morphological and molecoular approach

Abstract

With the Legislative Decree n.179 of 21 May 2004 on the unifloral honey's characteristics and with the CEE regulation 2081/92 of DOP denomination (from protect origin), scientific investigations in the agri-food sector started to occupy a prominent position with increasing importance. This area of investigation has been considerably deepened, becoming fundamental in order to consider this term valid, as it is also fundamental for investigation on production chain and denomination, made on various types of products. The morpho-genetic characterization analysis of pollen from honeys, made in the present work, lands itself well to this purpose; with the aim of ascertaining the validity of the wording of "unifloral" applied to some products from the beekeeping industry. Since the implications to which the investigations in the agri-food sector lead to cover not only the purely scientific-agronomic, but also the legal field, it follows the importance of an increasingly scientifically accurate methodology that also allows a faster processing of the sample. The protocol commonly used for pollen characterization of honeys is based on the visual recognition of the pollen present in the sample, their count and statistical analysis of the data obtained. Our method, using Real Time PCR technology, allows a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the pollen species inherent in the sample, thus allowing a fast and accurate analysis of the data that lends itself well to assist the classical research based on visual recognition of pollen.