A rapid spectroscopic technique for determining honey adulteration with corn syrup

A combination of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with multivariate procedures was used for determining the level of sugar addition to honey. Spectra of honey adulterated with different levels of glucose, fructose, sucrose, and corn syrup were recorded in the mid-infrared range using the attenuated total reflectance accessory. The standard error of prediction (SEP) in validation set was between 1.99% and 2.22% using partial least square (PLS) on first derivative transformed data. Results showed that the combined model for 3 different varieties of honey gave lower correlation. It is demonstrated that Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy has good potential for detecting corn-syrup adulteration in honey in less than 5 min.