molecules-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

Progress in Analytical Methods for the Characterization, Quality and Safety of the Beehive Products Ⅱ

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Analytical Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 4630

Special Issue Editors

Department of Chemical, Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, University of Sassari, Via Vienna, 2, 07100 Sassari, Italy
Interests: analytical chemistry; validation of analytical methods; chemometrics and data analysis; environmental chemistry and monitoring; food chemistry and analysis; speciation analysis; science of materials; electroanalytical methods; sensors and biosensors; modification of electrode surfaces; gas-chromatography; liquid chromatography; hyphenated methods; ICP-MS methods; FT-IR methods; determination of trace analytes in foods; food georeferencing and traceability; bioaccumulation of toxic elements in cereals; synthesis and characterization of conductive polymers; biomedical analysis in dental research; studies of equilibria in solution between metal ions and ligands of biological interest; ability of vegetal biomasses in removal of organic pollutants by wastewaters
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dipartimento di Chimica e Farmacia, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy
Interests: analytical chemistry; validation of analytical methods; chemometrics and data analysis; food chemistry and analysis; liquid chromatography; gas-chromatography; HPLC methods; GC methods; LC-MS; LC-MS/MS; GC-MS; SPME methods; extraction and characterization of bioactive compounds; determination of trace analytes in foods; food authentication and traceability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
1. CIBER Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain
2. Food and Environmental Safety Research Group, Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Food Science, Toxicology and Legal Medicine, University of Valencia, Avda. Vicente Andrés Estellés s/n, 46100 Burjassot, Valencia, Spain
3. Research Center on Desertification (CIDE, UV-CSIC-GV), Carretera Moncada-Náquera, 46113 Moncada, Valencia, Spain
Interests: development of new analytical methods to determine organic contaminants in food and the environment, identification of metabolites, degradation products and unknown compounds by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry; environmental risk assessment; environmental and food safety; application of “omics” techniques to environmental problems; development of environmental forensic approaches
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Sassari University, Sassari, Italy
Interests: analytical chemistry; development and validation of analytical methods (liquid- and gas-chromatography, spectroscopic methods, HPLC-ICP-MS, electroanalytical methods); food chemistry and analysis; environmental chemistry; speciation analysis; sensors and biosensors; synthesis and characterization of conductive polymers; studies of equilibria in solution between metal ions and ligands of biological interest; characterization of different components in biomasses
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, Università degli studi di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
Interests: food chemistry and analysis; natural bioactive compounds; antioxidants; phenolic compounds; beehive products; analytical chemistry; validation of analytical methods; extraction techniques; liquid-chromatography; gas-chromatography; hyphenated methods; chemometrics and data analysis; agro-food quality control; by-product valorization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Although beehive products have been known for millennia by humankind, their relevance in contemporary society is continuously growing. The most popular of them, honey, already used by the Neolithic man as a sweetener and medicament, is the subject of thousands of published contributions. In addition, scientists also show an untiring interest towards other beehive products such as beeswax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly. The reasons for this success are several: Alongside the growing awareness of consumers that the biological and health properties of beehive foods strongly depend on factors such as freshness, quality, safety, and origin, the scientific and technologic evolution of the analytical approaches is reflected in the improvement of the specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, and robustness of the methods used for their characterization. Hence, this Special Issue of Molecules will be mainly addressed to collect original articles, reviews, and technical notes providing the most recent and performing methods aimed to characterize, in terms of both quality and safety, beehive and beehive-derived products. Emphasis will be devoted to original, fully validated methods, as well as to new chemometric procedures aimed at maximizing the information contained in analytical data.

Dr. Gavino Sanna
Dr. Marco Ciulu
Prof. Dr. Yolanda Picò
Dr. Nadia Spano
Prof. Dr. Carlo I.G. Tuberoso
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • beehive products
  • honey
  • propolis
  • beeswax
  • royal jelly
  • pollen
  • nectar
  • bee venom
  • food traceability
  • food quality
  • food safety
  • spectroscopy
  • chromatography
  • electroanalysis
  • mass spectrometry
  • hyphenated methods
  • chemometrics
  • saccharides
  • lipids
  • proteins
  • amino acids
  • polyphenols
  • flavonoids
  • vitamins
  • trace compounds
  • volatile compounds
  • contaminants

Published Papers (3 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

23 pages, 5103 KiB  
Article
A Comprehensive HPTLC-Based Analysis of the Impacts of Temperature on the Chemical Properties and Antioxidant Activity of Honey
by Md Khairul Islam, Tomislav Sostaric, Lee Yong Lim, Katherine Hammer and Cornelia Locher
Molecules 2022, 27(23), 8491; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27238491 - 02 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1713
Abstract
Honeys are commonly subjected to a series of post-harvest processing steps, such as filtration and/or radiation treatment and heating to various temperatures, which might affect their physicochemical properties and bioactivity levels. Therefore, there is a need for robust quality control assessments after honey [...] Read more.
Honeys are commonly subjected to a series of post-harvest processing steps, such as filtration and/or radiation treatment and heating to various temperatures, which might affect their physicochemical properties and bioactivity levels. Therefore, there is a need for robust quality control assessments after honey processing and storage to ensure that the exposure to higher temperatures, for example, does not compromise the honey’s chemical composition and/or antioxidant activity. This paper describes a comprehensive short-term (48 h) and long-term (5 months) study of the effects of temperature (40 °C, 60 °C and 80 °C) on three commercial honeys (Manuka, Marri and Coastal Peppermint) and an artificial honey, using high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) analysis. Samples were collected at baseline, at 6 h, 12 h, 24 h and 48 h, and then monthly for five months. Then, they were analysed for potential changes in their organic extract HPTLC fingerprints, in their HPTLC-DPPH total band activities, in their major sugar composition and in their hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) content. It was found that, while all the assessed parameters changed over the monitoring period, changes were moderate at 40 °C but increased significantly with increasing temperature, especially the honeys’ HPTLC-DPPH total band activity and HMF content. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 1251 KiB  
Article
Characterization and Classification of Spanish Honey by Non-Targeted LC–HRMS (Orbitrap) Fingerprinting and Multivariate Chemometric Methods
by Víctor García-Seval, Javier Saurina, Sònia Sentellas and Oscar Núñez
Molecules 2022, 27(23), 8357; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27238357 - 30 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1226
Abstract
A non-targeted LC–HRMS fingerprinting methodology based on a C18 reversed-phase mode under universal gradient elution using an Orbitrap mass analyzer was developed to characterize and classify Spanish honey samples. A simple sample treatment consisting of honey dissolution with water and a 1:1 dilution [...] Read more.
A non-targeted LC–HRMS fingerprinting methodology based on a C18 reversed-phase mode under universal gradient elution using an Orbitrap mass analyzer was developed to characterize and classify Spanish honey samples. A simple sample treatment consisting of honey dissolution with water and a 1:1 dilution with methanol was proposed. A total of 136 honey samples belonging to different blossom and honeydew honeys from different botanical varieties produced in different Spanish geographical regions were analyzed. The obtained LC–HRMS fingerprints were employed as sample chemical descriptors for honey pattern recognition by principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares–discriminant analysis (PLS–DA). The results demonstrated a superior honey classification and discrimination capability with respect to previous non-targeted HPLC–UV fingerprinting approaches, with them being able to discriminate and authenticate the honey samples according to their botanical origins. Overall, noteworthy cross-validation multiclass predictions were accomplished with sensitivity and specificity values higher than 96.2%, except for orange/lemon blossom (BL) and rosemary (RO) blossom-honeys. The proposed methodology was also able to classify and authenticate the climatic geographical production region of the analyzed honey samples, with cross-validation sensitivity and specificity values higher than 87.1% and classification errors below 10.5%. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 1190 KiB  
Article
Quantitation of 1,4-Dichlorobenzene and Thymol in Beeswax Using Dynamic Headspace Vacuum Transfer in Trap Extraction Prior to Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
by Christina Kast, Marion Fracheboud and Pascal Fuchsmann
Molecules 2022, 27(17), 5367; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27175367 - 23 Aug 2022
Viewed by 1196
Abstract
A method based on dynamic headspace vacuum transfer in trap extraction, followed by gas chromatography coupled with a mass spectrometer (DHS-VTT-GC-MS), was validated for the fast quantitation of 1,4-dichlorobenzene (p-dichlorobenzene; PDCB) and thymol residues in beeswax. The quantitation limits (LOQ) were 0.05 mg/kg [...] Read more.
A method based on dynamic headspace vacuum transfer in trap extraction, followed by gas chromatography coupled with a mass spectrometer (DHS-VTT-GC-MS), was validated for the fast quantitation of 1,4-dichlorobenzene (p-dichlorobenzene; PDCB) and thymol residues in beeswax. The quantitation limits (LOQ) were 0.05 mg/kg (PDCB) and 0.25 mg/kg (thymol). Recoveries above 80% were obtained for PDCB concentrations between 0.05 and 10 mg/kg and for thymol concentrations between 0.25 and 200 mg/kg. Analysis of beeswax samples showed a good correlation between the results obtained by DHS-VTT-GC-MS analysis and those of a previous method based on SPE extraction followed by gas chromatography and triple- quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) (R2 = 0.9770 for PDCB and 0.9666 for thymol). However, the sample preparation and chromatography were much shorter using the DHS-VTT-GC-MS method. Forty comb foundations samples produced in Switzerland in 2019 and 2021 were analysed using DHS-VTT-GC-MS. Fourteen samples contained PDCB above the LOQ of 0.05 mg/kg, ranging up to a maximum of 1.53 mg/kg. The mean concentration of the positive samples was 0.22 mg/kg. All samples contained thymol residues ranging between 3.9 and 84.4 mg/kg with mean and median concentrations of 22.7 mg/kg and 17.4 mg/kg. Residue levels of PCDB and thymol in Swiss beeswax were substantially below those measured 20 (PDCB) and 10 (thymol) years ago, respectively. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop