FULL ARTICLE Phenolic profiles, antioxidant, antimicrobial, and DNA damage inhibitory activities of chestnut honeys from Black Sea Region of Turkey Melek Çol Ayvaz 1 | Belde € Om€ ur 1 | € Omer Ert € urk 2 | Dilek Kabakçi 3 1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Arts, Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey 2 Department of Biology, Faculty of Science and Arts, Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey 3 Apiculture Research Institute, Ordu, Turkey Correspondence Melek Çol Ayvaz, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Arts, Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey. Email: melekcol@hotmail.com Funding information Ordu University Scientific Researches Project Coordination Department Abstract Honey is the product of beekeeping that has great market potential thanks to valuable nutritional and medicinal qualities. Black Sea Region coast of Turkey is suitable for production of chestnut production so chestnut-based honeys are highly produced in this region. To prove the beneficial therapeutic properties, 49 chestnut (Castania sativa Mill.) honey samples from the cities of Black Sea Region were investigated in terms of colors, total phenolic and flavonoid contents, antioxidant activities, antimicrobial potentials, phenolics, and effects on hydroxyl radical-induced DNA breaks in the non-site-specific system. The amount of flavonoid was found to be limited in chestnut honey samples compared to the phenolic acids. A wide variation was observed in the amounts of total antioxidant activities of honey samples. It was displayed that most of the tested honey sam- ples had the ability to repair the DNA breaks created by hydroxyl radicals. Practical applications As the chestnut honey (CH) is one of the most popular and valued honey around the world, the objective of this study was to reveal the potential of the Black Sea Region where CH production is being carried out effectively. Actually, CH samples investigated in this study had superior proper- ties in terms of the parameters examined when compared with the results of similar studies. Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of the CH samples at effective levels could be attributed to the presence of phenolic substances at a significant level. The high phenolic contents of the sam- ples are predicted to contribute to the ability to resist DNA damage. With all these determined features, CHs can be useful in various applications such as medicine, cosmetics, and food. In this way, CH production in this region contribute to both the region’s and the country’s economy. KEYWORDS antimicrobial activity, antioxidant activity, chestnut honey, DNA damage inhibitory activity, DPPH, FRAP, HPLC, phenolics 1 | INTRODUCTION Honey is a natural sweet complex food produced from nectar and hon- eydew by Apis mellifera (Os es, Pascual-Mat e, Fernandez-Mui~ no, L opez-Díaz, & Sancho, 2016). Its composition varies depending on several factors such as botanical origins, climate, contribution of bee- keeper, and environmental and storage conditions (Habib, Al Meqbali, Kamal, Souka, & Ibrahim, 2014; Os es et al., 2016). Among the nearly 200 compounds existed in honey, phenolic acids—having the least amount—are interesting compounds and they give the most important feature of the honey (Alvarez-Suarez et al., 2010). At the same time, these components constitute the enzymatic and nonenzymatic antioxi- dant sources of honey (  Canadanović-Brunet et al., 2014). On the other hand, there are minerals (mostly potassium), amino acids (especially proline), proteins, vitamins, and enzymes in the content of the honey in addition to the sugars (Can et al., 2015; Mouhoubi-Tafinine, Ouche- moukh, & Tamendjari, 2016). Therapeutic effect of honey is mainly associated with its antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. Different honey types around the world demonstrate antioxidative activities in different J Food Biochem. 2018;e12502. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfbc.12502 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jfbc VC 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1 of 10 Received: 29 September 2017 | Revised: 22 November 2017 | Accepted: 2 January 2018 DOI: 10.1111/jfbc.12502