Determination of Moisture Content and its Correlation with other Parameters in Honey Quality Control

Abstract

Honey is the natural sweet and viscous food produced by bees- the genus Apis- exclusively from the nectar of plants or from sweet secretions of green parts of plants in order to have it for their energetic needs. To become honey, the nectar and sweet secretions which the bees collect are enriched with specific substances of their own, are processed in a specific way, are stored and leaved in honeycombs of the beehive to ripen and mature. Honey of the same floral source can vary due to seasonal climatic variations or due to a different geographical origin. According to international and national food regulations, “honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance”. Unfortunately honey has long been a prime target of adulteration. Honey authenticity cannot be detected easily, by visually examining or by tasting; the only real evidence is coming from analysis using defined analytical techniques internationally certified. There is no single procedure that can certify that any product is pure honey, but a number of analyses are able to verify that nothing has been added to or substituted for the real thing. In the present contribution we have investigated the significance of the moisture content for honey quality and its correlation with other honey authenticity parameters, especially with the fructose-glucose and sucrose content. For the determination of moisture content it was applied the refractometric method and for fructose-glucose and for sucrose content a high performance liquid chromatographic method.