title: Provenance Establishment of Stingless Bee Honey Using Multi-element Analysis in Combination with Chemometrics Techniques.
abstract: As consumption of stingless bee honey has been gaining popularity in many countries including Malaysia, ability to identify accurately its geographical origin proves pertinent for investigating fraudulent activities for consumer protection. Because a chemical signature can be location-specific, multi-element distribution patterns may prove useful for provenancing such product. Using the inductively coupled-plasma optical emission spectrometer as well as principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), the distributions of multi-elements in stingless bee honey collected at four different geographical locations (North, West, East, and South) in Johor, Malaysia, were investigated. While cross-validation using PCA demonstrated 87.0% correct classification rate, the same was improved (96.2%) with the use of LDA, indicating that discrimination was possible for the different geographical regions. Therefore, utilization of multi-element analysis coupled with chemometrics techniques for assigning the provenance of stingless bee honeys for forensic applications is supported.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, 81310, Malaysia.|Department of Chemistry Malaysia, Jalan Sultan, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, 46661, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Aidil Fahmi
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Shadan
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, 81310, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Naji A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Mahat
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, 81310, Malaysia.|Centre of Sustainable Nanomaterials, Ibnu Sina Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, 81310, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Wan Aini
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Wan Ibrahim
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry Malaysia Johor Branch, Jalan Abdul Samad, Johor Bahru, 80100, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Zaiton
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ariffin
authors.affiliation: School of Health Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, 16150, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Dzulkiflee
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ismail
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees; D003257:Consumer Product Safety; D059022:Food Safety; D005843:Geography; D006722:Honey / Q000032:analysis*; D006801:Humans; D008296:Malaysia; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D013053:Spectrophotometry
keywords: Malaysia; chemometrics techniques; forensic science; multi-elements; provenance; stingless bee honey