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Identification of the entomological origin of European honey by high resolution melting analysis of a COI mini-barcode
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Honey is widely consumed worldwide and highly appreciated for its organoleptic, nutritional and health
properties. Honey is also considered one of the foods most prone to be adulterated, either by admixing of
honey with lower quality, by sugars’ addition, or by origin mislabelling, among other possible frauds.
Recently, great attention has been paid to the development of techniques for authenticating honey through its
entomological origin, which is also related to its geographical origin, since bees carrying mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) from distinct ancestries can be found throughout Europe. Moreover, consumers are increasingly
concerned with ethical and environmental issues, paying attention to issues such as the protection of
biodiversity and the mode of production. For these reasons, the development of methodologies to authenticate
the entomological origin of honey contributes not only to assure consumers rights and avoid unfair competition
by the identification of frauds, but also to promote and valorise autochthonous honeybee subspecies.
In this work, a one-step approach based on HRM analysis of a 150 bp fragment of the COI gene was developed
to establish the entomological origin of honey by discriminating A, M and C mtDNA lineages and
differentiating a SNP associated with a high frequency of C1 or C2 mitotypes in the Italian honey bee A. m.
ligustica and the Carniolan honey bee A. m. carnica. The method showed high analytical performance and
was able to successfully identify the entomological origin of honeys of known origin obtained from research
apiaries/beekeepers. Therefore, it was applied to 44 commercial honeys from different countries. It confirmed
the entomological authenticity of French PDO honeys that should be produced by the Corse ecotype A. m.
mellifera. For the remaining honeys, the results were also in good agreement with the declared geographical
origin. This method is also capable of indicating the mixture of honeys produced by honey bees of different
lineages, although not allowing to identify the lineages or mitotypes in the mixture. This was the case of three
honeys from Slovenia that did not cluster with C2 mitotype A. m. carnica as expected, suggesting the mixture
of honeys produced by honeybees of different mitotypes.
Description
Keywords
Honey authenticity HRM analysis Apis mellifera subspecies
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Honrado, Mónica; Lopes, Ana; Pinto, M. Alice; Amaral, Joana S. (2022). Identification of the entomological origin of European honey by high resolution melting analysis of a COI mini-barcode. In ICBees- Internacional Congress on Bee Sciences. Online
Publisher
ICBees