Boffo E. F., Tavares L. A., Ferreira A. G., Ferreira M. M. C., Tobias A. C. T., "Adulteration Study in Brazilian Honey by Using SNIF and ¹H NMR". Nottingham, UK, 16-19/07/2006: 8th International Conference on Applications of Magnetic Resonance in Food Science: From Molecules to Man, Oral. Proceedings in book: I. A. Farhat, P.S. Belton, G. A. Webb (Eds.): Magnetic Resonance in Food Science: From Molecules to Man, Special Publication No. 310, The Royal Society of Chemistry , London, pp. 105-113 (2007).
[Article. More information about the meeting see at Notes2.]

105

ADULTERATION STUDY IN BRAZILIAN HONEY BY USING SNIF AND ¹H NMR

E.F. Boffo¹, L.A. Tavares¹, A.G. Ferreira¹, M.M.C. Ferreira² and A.C.T. Tobias³

¹ Departamento de Química, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos - SP, Brasil.
² Instituto de Químia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas - SP, Brasil.
³ Centro Regional Universitário Espírito Santo do Pinhal, Espírito Santo do Pinhal - SP, Brasil.

The work describes the use of SNIF-NMR techniques to classify honey commercial samples using the ²H/¹H isotopic relation of  methyl and methylene groups in ethanol by NMR, in order to investigate the products adulateration. ¹H NMR was used in tandem with chemometric methods Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA).
Forty honey samples were studied: they were first fermentated by Saccharomyces cerevisiae, then distilled and their ²H and ¹H spectra were collected and analyzed by HCA. Analysis of the HCA dendogram has shown that SNIF-NMR method can distinguish honeys which were produced from flowers with different biosynthetic origin as C₃ (eucalyptus and citrus) and C₄ (sugar-cane). The chemometric analysis applied to ¹H NMR spectra, for the same samples, can discriminate honeys from eucalyptus and citrus. Besides, honeys can be discriminated with respect to their geographical origin.