Quality Evaluation of Honey Using Spectral Analysis and Chemometric Regression Methods

The article presents a comparative analysis of two main chemometric regression methods in the determination of nine quality parameters of honey samples, through the analysis of their spectral data. 29 types of honey from 14 regions of Bulgaria form the experimental sample included in the study. The reference values ​​of heavy metals - arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), iron (Fe), the amount of pH, reducing sugars, sweet disaccharide and water content were obtained in a certified laboratory. The spectral characteristics of the honey samples were obtained using an Ocean Optics spectrophotometer and are in the range of 100 - 1000 nm. The accuracy of the two chemometric regression methods PLSR and PCR for determining the quality parameters of honey samples was assessed. The results show that more accurate results are obtained with PLSR. The best results for predicting the main quality parameters of honey are shown by PLSR with values for the presence of heavy metals on R2 from 0.4881 for cadmium to 0.7981 for lead; as well as for the evaluation of the main physicochemical parameters from 0.4061 for reducing sugar to 0.5693 for Sweet disaccharide.