Honey & Honey Adulteration Detection: A Review Laleh Mehryar a , Mohsen Esmaiili b a Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Urmia, Iran (laleh.mehryar@gmail.com ) b Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Urmia, Iran (m.esmaiili@urmia.ac.ir ) ABSTRACT Honey is an ancient valuable food and in most cases has enchanted its consumers by its medic characteristics. It consists mainly of sugars but also contains some amounts of acids, nitrogenous compounds, phenolic contents, HMF, minerals and water. Honey composition according to the studied literature is mainly dependant on its floral source and differs in various honeys. Honey adulteration is a complex problem which currently has a significant economic impact and undeniable nutritional and organoleptic consequences. There are many methods utilized for honey adulteration detection by most researchers, for instance Gas Chromatography (GC) and Liquid Chromatography (LC) analysis, Near Infrared Transflectance (NIR) spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR), Protein characterization, High-Performance Anion-Exchange Chromatography with Pulsed Amperometric Detection (HPAEC-PAD), Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (HPLC- IRMS), Calorimetric methods (Application of DSC), Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Analysis (SCIRA), Fourier Transform (FT) Raman spectroscopy and Microscopic detection. These methods are all applicable and provide useful information about each aspect of honey authenticity but in order to have an overall and accurate result we should not rely on each technique solely but also do some of them concomitantly. These mentioned methods are described briefly in this review. Keywords: honey; adulteration; chromatography; spectroscopy; DSC 1. INTRODUCTION Honey is defined as the natural sweet substance produced by honeybees [1]. The dietary frauds in particular the adulteration are practices in constant progress. Adulteration consists of adding external chemical substance(s) into a food product that contains naturally similar substance(s) [2]. Honey adulteration appeared on the world market in the 1970s when high-fructose corn syrup was introduced by the industry [3]. The authentication of food products is of primary importance for both consumers and industries, at all levels of the production process [2 & 4]. Many foods have the potential to be deliberately adulterated, but those that are expensive and are produced under wide fluctuations in weather and harvesting conditions are particularly susceptible; honey is one of such material [4]. Although the adulteration of honey is not injurious to health, problems of honey fraud negatively influence market growth by damaging consumer confidence [5]. Recently, guaranteeing honey quality is becoming increasingly important for consumers, producers and regulatory authorities. The European Commission encourages the use of analytical methods to determine the authenticity of honeys [6]. It seems quite necessary that preparing an overall review of the applied procedures by researchers in detecting honey adulteration would be useful and serve as a good source in oncoming works. 2. HONEY: Chemical, Physical and Rheological properties 2.1 Chemical composition 2.1.1 Sugar content Sugars are the main constituents of honey. The amount of sugar contents were found at the range of: 45.3-86.0 g/100g for total sugar [7-8], 43.3-93.70 g/100g for total reducing sugar [7 & 9], 64.14-99.30 g/100g for invert sugar [9-10], 20.84-58.38 g/100g for Fructose [9 & 11], 13.5-50.77 g/100g for Glucose [9 & 12], 0.78-1.75 for Fructose to Glucose ratio [13-14], and 0.06-24.8 g/100g for sucrose content [11 & 15]. 2.1.2 Acidity and pH