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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees. According to the European
Union legislation, it should be produced by the westem honey bee, Apis mellifera. However,
in Ăsia, honey is traditionally obtained from other bee species, mainly the eastera honey bee
Apis cerana. So far, only a few protein-based methods have been proposed to assess honey
entomological origin[ ], which in fact is related to its geographical origin since bee species
generally occupy different geographical ranges according to their evolutionary lineages [ ].
In this work, DNA markers were developed for the specifĂc identification ofA. mellifera and
A. cerana in honey. For this purpose, bees of A. cerana from Thailand, China and Vietnam
and honey bees of 4 different subspecies of A. mellifera (iberiensis, mellifera, ligustĂca,
carnica) from EU countries were used. Different sets ofprimers were designed targeting the
16S rRNA gene and the tRNAleu - COII intergenic region. The specificity and sensitivity of
the designed primers were assayed by qualitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Primers
targeting the intergenic region successfully differentiated A. cerana from A. mellifera.
Positive amplifications were obtained for ali the bees with 16S rRNA primers. However, the
use of real-time PCR coupled with High Resolution Melting analysis allowed the separation
of the two honey bee species in different clusters. The developed methodologies were
applied to the analysis ofauthentic honey samples from Vietnam (produced from A. cerana
and A. mellifera bees) and from Portugal allowing its successful entomological origin
identification.
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Citation
Soares, SĂłnia S.; Grazina, Liliana; Mafra, Isabel; Costa, Joana; Pinto, M. Alice; Duc, Hahn P.; Oliveira, M.B.P.P.; Amaral, J.S. (2017). Development of molecular markers for honey entomological origin identification. In XIX EuroFoodChem Conference. Budapest