Determination of Chinese honey adulterated with high fructose corn syrup by near infrared spectroscopy

The use of fibre optic diffuse reflectance near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) in combination with chemometric techniques has been investigated to discriminate authenticity of honey. NIR spectra of unadulterated honey and adulterated honey samples with high fructose corn syrup were registered within 10,000–4000 cm−1 spectral region. Discriminant partial least squares (DPLS) models were constructed to distinguish between unadulterated honey and adulterated honey samples and main bands responsible for the discrimination of samples are in the range of 6000–10,000 cm−1. For these models, the correct classification rate for calibration samples were above 90%. Hundred percentage of unadulterated honey and 95% of adulterated honey samples from test set were correctly classified after appropriate preprocessing of first derivative, 13 smoothing points, followed by mean centering pre-treatment and eight model factors, respectively. Our results showed that NIR spectroscopy data with chemometrics techniques can be applied to rapid detecting honey adulteration with high fructose corn syrup.