Multivariate analysis of reflectance spectra from propolis: Geographical variation in Romanian samples

The present study described reflectance spectroscopy as a suitable analytical tool to discriminate the floral origin of 39 Romanian propolis samples. Relevant differences between the UV–vis reflectance spectra of the investigated propolis samples within the 220–850 nm spectral range were found. The results obtained applying cluster analysis, principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis to the digitized data of zero order, zero order normalized and first order derivative spectra support the reliability of this technique. In addition, the application of the linear discriminant analysis to the score matrices corresponding to the first principal components appeared to be an illuminating solution. Generally, the samples have been assigned to two large groups in a good agreement with their vegetal sampling location, samples originating from predominant forest area and samples originating from meadows. Within the first group, two subgroups were identified according to the dominant type of the forest, deciduous or resinous, while within the last group three subgroups were found according to the extend and variety of the meadow.