Rising honey prices, more affluent customers, and changing environmental conditions, coupled with bee health issues from pesticides, mites and viruses are putting ever more pressure on honey producers to supply their products, and increasing the likelihood of adulteration being used to satisfy demand.
Official studies of the extent of honey adulteration in the European Union and Canada has been shown to range between 15 - 22 %. Other studies have suggested that adulteration may be considerably more than this. To ensure that producers and consumers are protected from this illegal practice, authorities and industry must invest in analytical testing of honey. Stable carbon isotope ratio analysis (SCIRA) is an established technique in the fight against honey fraud and Elementar is proud to deliver the next generation of SCIRA testing, BiovisION Honey.
Our new BiovisION Honey solution is a complete honey testing platform for the stable carbon isotope ratio analysis (SCIRA) compliant with AOAC 998.12 for C4 honey adulteration as well as the detection of C3 honey adulteration using our new, easy-to-use high temperature combustion method for LC-IRMS.
The same instrument is also capable of validating the geographical origin of honey using multi-elemental isotopic analysis and using chemometric analysis and comparison against a database of authentic samples. For more information, please see the BiovisION Honey product brochure.
The BiovisION Honey harnesses Elementar’s extensive experience of high temperature oxidation chemistry to deliver a completely new liquid chromatography– isotope ratio mass spectrometry (LC-IRMS) solution. This new technology is a substantial improvement over existing wet-chemical oxidation LC-IRMS systems which suffer from extensive reliability issues, leading to unaffordable inefficiency in the laboratory. High-temperature oxidation is simpler and significantly more robust generating a better return on investment without compromising analytical quality. Check out our infographic to learn more about how our instrument outperforms its rivals.
The detection of the adulteration of honey with C4-type sugars is a method standardized by AOAC (998.12). This method utilizes Elemental Analyzer—Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (EA-IRMS). The method determines the δ13C of the honey protein and the honey sugars and determines the difference between them. If the protein and sugars are the same, there is no presence of C4 sugars in the honey. If there is a difference between the values additional C4 sugars are illegally present in the honey.
The detection of the adulteration of honey with C3-type sugars requires a more sophisticated method. Since honey is derived from C3-type plants, and adulteration with C3-type sugars cannot be detected by AOAC 998.12 method. Instead, the honey is separated into constituent sugars using liquid chromatography. The separated sugars are then converted to CO2 and the δ13C of the individual sugars is determined. Differences in δ13C value of the carbohydrate are then calculated to evaluate the presence of C3-type sugar adulteration.
As well as performing adulteration detection, the BiovisION Honey EA-IRMS system can help detect the fraudulent behaviour of declaring honey as a product of a different origin than its true origin. By analyzing the nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen isotope ratios of honey as well as the carbon isotope ratios, a unique “isotopic fingerprint” can be developed. Coupled to Elementar’s Analytical Results Database (ArDB) software tool, authentic samples can be discerned from fraudulent samples with ease.
What our customers say
So far, the Elementar LC-IRMS instrument has been very impressive for C4 and C3 honey adulteration analysis. The high-temperature combustion method means that no aggressive chemicals such as sodium persulfate are required, which can lead to blocked tubes, noisy baselines and instrument downtime.
The instrument hardware is easy to maintain and offers automatic routines for performance checks running overnight. We are now much closer to running samples 24/7.
Ulrike Burmester, Senior lab supervisor for authenticity stable isotope and NMR food services at Intertek Food Services GmbH, Germany
Elementar has provided excellent instruments to my laboratory and the great support of the local Elementar China engineers has been very important to successfully analyze the 5,000 samples per year that we have passing through the laboratory. In particular, the ionOS software is very impressive and makes running the instruments very simple and efficient making my life much easier than other IRMS software used by other manufacturers.
Dr Wu Hao, Senior Engineer working at the Technical Centre of Food Inspection and Quarantine at Shenzhen Customs, China
