title: Determination of volatile organic compound patterns characteristic of five unifloral honey by solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry coupled to chemometrics.
abstract: We report the evaluation of the floral origin of honey by analysis of its volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profile, joined with the use of combined pattern recognition techniques. Honey samples, from five floral origins, were analyzed by headspace solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, selecting 35 VOCs out of the entire profiles, which were analyzed by hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA), and K-nearest-neighbor (KNN). Both HCA and SDA were used as exploratory tools to select a group of VOCs representing similitude and differences among studied origins. Thus, six out of 35 VOCs were selected, verifying their discriminating power by KNN, which afforded 93% correct classification. Therefore, we drastically reduced the amount of compounds under consideration but kept a good differentiation between floral origins. Selected compounds were identified as octanal, benzeneacetaldehyde, 1-octanol, 2-methoxyphenol, nonanal, and 2-H-1-benzopyran-2-one. The analysis of VOC profiles, coupled to HCA, SDA, and KNN, provides a feasible alternative to evaluate the botanical source of honey.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba-CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Dto. Bioquímica Clínica-CIBICI, Medina Allende y Haya de la Torre, Ciudad Universitaria, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: María Verónica
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Baroni
authors.forename: María Laura
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Nores
authors.forename: María del Pilar
authors.initials: Mdel P
authors.lastname: Díaz
authors.forename: Gustavo Alberto
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Chiabrando
authors.forename: Juan Pablo
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Fassano
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.forename: Daniel Alberto
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Wunderlin
mesh_terms: D020003:1-Octanol / Q000032:analysis; D000447:Aldehydes / Q000032:analysis; D003374:Coumarins / Q000032:analysis; D035264:Flowers; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D006139:Guaiacol / Q000032:analysis; D006722:Honey / Q000032:analysis* / Q000145:classification*; D014835:Volatilization
chemical_list: D000447:Aldehydes; D003374:Coumarins; D006139:Guaiacol; D020003:1-Octanol