Determination of Floral Origin Common Honey in Khorasan Razavi Province Based on Color Characteristics, Salinity, Electrical Resistance and TDS using Chemometrics Methods

Nowadays, food adulteration is important to marketing and production. The purpose of this study was to classify different types of honey (Thyme, Chaste tree, Jujube, Coriander, Barberry, Acacia and Alfalfa) with different herbal origin based on color characteristics, salinity, electrical resistance and total dissolved solids (TDS). For classification of honey, principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and cluster analysis (CA) of chemometrics method, were used. The results showed the two principal components (PC1 and PC2) comprise 77.69% of the total variance, which indicates the distinction between different honeys based on physicochemical characteristics. It was also shown in the LDA method was able to classify different honeys with an accuracy of 75%. On the other hand, the method of CA in the distance of 85.58, honey was placed in 7 groups that contained thyme, coriander, acacia, barberry and jujube honey in separate groups and alfalfa honey and chaste tree honey were scattered among the groups.