Liquid chromatography coupled to isotope ratio mass spectrometry: a new perspective on honey adulteration detection.

A new procedure to determine individual sugar (sucrose, glucose, and fructose) 13C isotope ratios, using liquid chromatography-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (HPLC-IRMS), has been developed to improve isotopic methods devoted to the study of honey authenticity. For this purpose 79 commercial honey samples from various origins were analyzed. Values of delta13Choney ranged from -14.2 to -27.2", and delta13Cprotein ranged from -23.6 to -26.9". A very strong correlation is observed between the individual sugar 13C ratios, which are altered in the event of sugar addition, even at low levels. The use of Deltadelta13C [fruct-glu], Deltadelta13C [fruct-suc], and Deltadelta13C [gluc-suc] systematic differences as an authenticity criterion permits the sugar addition [C3, beet sugar; or C4, cane sugar, cane syrup, isoglucose syrup, and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)] to be reliably detected (DL = 1-10%). The new procedure has advantages over existing methods in terms of analysis time and sensitivity. In addition, it is the first isotopic method developed that allows beet sugar addition detection.

[1]  Jonathan W. White.  Internal Standard Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Method for Determination of C-4 Plant Sugars in Honey: Collaborative Study, and Evaluation of Improved Protein Preparation Procedure , 1992 .

[2]  Brennan Jt,et al.  High-precision liquid chromatography-combustion isotope ratio mass spectrometry , 1993 .

[3]  S. Epstein,et al.  Two Categories of 13C/12C Ratios for Higher Plants , 1971 .

[4]  J. White,et al.  Honey protein as internal standard for stable carbon isotope ratio detection of adulteration of honey. , 1989, Journal - Association of Official Analytical Chemists.

[5]  H. Schmidt.  Food quality control and studies on human nutrition by mass spectrometric and nuclear magnetic resonance isotope ratio determination , 1986 .

[6]  G. Földházi.  Analysis and quantitation of sugars in honey of different botanical origin using high performance liquid chromatography , 1994 .

[7]  J. White,et al.  Stable carbon isotope ratio analysis of honey: validation of internal standard procedure for worldwide application , 1998 .

[8]  Gerard Downey,et al.  Application of Fourier transform midinfrared spectroscopy to the discrimination between Irish artisanal honey and such honey adulterated with various sugar syrups. , 2006, Journal of agricultural and food chemistry.

[9]  M. M. Bender.  Variations in the 13C/12C ratios of plants in relation to the pathway of photosynthetic carbon dioxide fixation , 1971 .

[10]  R. Pesch,et al.  A new concept for isotope ratio monitoring liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. , 2004, Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM.

[11]  S. Markey,et al.  Mass spectrometric analysis of sulfur in microgram quantities of biological macromolecules using a reaction interface. , 1986, Biomedical & environmental mass spectrometry.

[12]  W. Meier-Augenstein,et al.  Applied gas chromatography coupled to isotope ratio mass spectrometry. , 1999, Journal of chromatography. A.

[13]  Daniel Cabrol-Bass,et al.  Detection and quantification of honey adulteration via direct incorporation of sugar syrups or bee-feeding: preliminary study using high-performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD) and chemometrics , 2005 .