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. 2020 Sep 1;9(9):1205.
doi: 10.3390/foods9091205.

Geographical Origin Discrimination of Monofloral Honeys by Direct Analysis in Real Time Ionization-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (DART-HRMS)

Vincenzo Lippolis  1 , Elisabetta De Angelis  1 , Giuseppina Maria Fiorino  1 , Annalisa Di Gioia  1 , Marco Arlorio  2 , Antonio Francesco Logrieco  1 , Linda Monaci  1
Affiliations

Geographical Origin Discrimination of Monofloral Honeys by Direct Analysis in Real Time Ionization-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (DART-HRMS)

Vincenzo Lippolis et al. Foods. .

Abstract

An untargeted method using direct analysis in real time and high resolution mass spectrometry (DART-HRMS) combined to multivariate statistical analysis was developed for the discrimination of two monofloral (chestnut and acacia) honeys for their geographical origins-i.e., Italy and Portugal for chestnut honey and Italy and China for acacia honey. Principal Component Analysis, used as an unsupervised approach, showed samples of clusterization for chestnut honey samples, while overlapping regions were observed for acacia honeys. Three supervised statistical approaches, such as Principal Components-Linear Discriminant Analysis, Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis and k-nearest neighbors, were tested on the dataset gathered and relevant performances were compared. All tested statistical approaches provided comparable prediction abilities in cross-validation and external validation with mean values falling between 89.2-98.4% for chestnut and between 85.8-95.0% for acacia honey. The results obtained herein indicate the feasibility of the DART-HRMS approach in combination with chemometrics for the rapid authentication of honey's geographical origin.

Keywords: chemometrics; direct analysis in real time (DART); geographical origin; high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS); monofloral honey.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Representative DART-HRMS positive ion spectra acquired for the sample extracts of chestnut honeys from Italy (a), chestnut honeys from Portugal (b), acacia honeys from Italy (c) and acacia honeys from China (d). NL: Normalization level.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Representative DART-HRMS positive ion spectra acquired for the sample extracts of chestnut honeys from Italy (a), chestnut honeys from Portugal (b), acacia honeys from Italy (c) and acacia honeys from China (d). NL: Normalization level.
Figure 2
Figure 2
PC1 vs. PC2 scatter plots for monofloral chestnut (a) and acacia (b) honey samples. Geographical origins: Italy (black filled circle), Portugal (grey filled triangle), China (grey filled rhombus).
Figure 2
Figure 2
PC1 vs. PC2 scatter plots for monofloral chestnut (a) and acacia (b) honey samples. Geographical origins: Italy (black filled circle), Portugal (grey filled triangle), China (grey filled rhombus).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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