Rapid identification of adulterated honey according to the targeted analysis of phenolic compounds using chemometrics

With honey adulteration, not only consumers and masses are defrauded, but also the normal market order is adversely upsetting due to the unfair competition. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an accurate and fast method for the identification of honey adulteration. A new chemometrics-assisted high-performance liquid chromatography–diode array detection (HPLC–DAD) method was developed to rapidly and sensitively quantify seven phenolic compounds (i.e., gallic acid, 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid, chlorogenic acid, p -hydroxybenzoic acid, syringic acid, abscisic acid, and cinnamic acid) in honey and identify three types of adulteration in honey samples. This strategy has proven to be a useful tool for co-eluting and strong background interference problems in chromatographic analysis, and is able to quantify seven target analytes in complex samples within only 5.4 min. The average recoveries of seven target analytes in honey and adulterated honey samples ranged from 85.25 to 109.60%, with a low quantification limit and good sensitivity. In addition, the contents of major phenolic compounds were utilized as input variables for the identification of real honey and adulterated honey samples by principal component analysis (PCA). The experimental results showed that there was a close relationship between the content of phenolic acid compounds and the quality of honey, and therefore, the analysis in this paper would provide a powerful reference to fight with honey adulteration by combining chemometric technologies.