title: High-performance liquid chromatographic phenolic compound fingerprint for authenticity assessment of honey.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Phenolic compound profiles of 20 honeys of different botanical origin (eucalyptus, citrus, chestnut and linden) were obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection after solid phase extraction, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the fingerprint method for monofloral honey discrimination.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 58 peaks were detected at λ = 280 nm. Distinctive phenolic compound profiles were obtained in which both the nature and the relative amount of the detected compounds were characteristic for different botanical source honeys. In order to detect sample groupings, chromatographic peak areas were submitted to principal component analysis. Then linear discriminant analysis was carried out on the first three principal components. In addition, linear discriminant analysis was carried out on the 58 variables, allowing the selection of five variables able to discriminate honeys of different botanical origin.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The chemometric evaluation of the phenolic compound profiles yielded classification models able to group honey samples according to their floral source with an excellent degree of agreement. The main advantage of the fingerprint approach with respect to traditional methods is that it does not require time-consuming identification and quantification of the analytes. The method proved to be effective for the assessment of honey authenticity.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Chimica Generale ed Inorganica, Chimica Analitica, Chimica Fisica, Università degli Studi di Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 17/A, I-43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cavazza
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Corradini
authors.forename: Marilena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Musci
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Salvadeo
mesh_terms: D031319:Aesculus / Q000737:chemistry; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D002957:Citrus / Q000737:chemistry; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005052:Eucalyptus / Q000737:chemistry; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005419:Flavonoids / Q000032:analysis*; D005513:Food Inspection / Q000379:methods*; D006722:Honey / Q000032:analysis*; D007558:Italy; D010636:Phenols / Q000032:analysis*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D052616:Solid Phase Extraction; D013056:Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet; D032384:Tilia / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D005419:Flavonoids; D010636:Phenols