Detection of Malaysian stingless bee honey’s authenticity using Fourier Transform Infrared–Attenuated Total Reflection (FTIR-ATR) spectroscopy technique with multivariate analysis

Stingless bee honey produced by a species of stingless bee, Heterotrigona itama is well known for its nutritional benefits and being consumed by the local community as a supplement without them realizing the authenticity of the honey. The artificial honey found in the market is usually added with cheaper sugar such as cane sugar, corn sugar, melaka sugar and some even diluted with water to increase the volume of honey and reap a good profit by irresponsible traders. The added sugar in this honey will cause harm to their health such as diabetes, obesity, cholesterol, and high blood pressure. There are various scientific methods of honey authenticity analysis that have been developed. However, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy - attenuated total reflection (FTIR-ATR) is gaining more and more attention because of its ability to analyze samples quickly and accurately. In this study, the difference between authentic stingless bee honey (n=50) from 11 different states in Peninsular Malaysia and adulterated honey including sugar from C3 plants can also be distinguished by using a combination of FTIR spectroscopic techniques with PCA and OPLS-DA multivariate statistical techniques. From the OPLS-DA analysis conducted, the value of data suitability (R2) and model prediction ability (Q2) obtained are respectively 0.818 and 0.349 where this value is higher than the acceptance limit. Two unknown authenticity samples of stingless bee honey have been successfully tested using the developed OPLS-DA model.