Background: Adulteration is defined as the intentional addition of a material that is not a part of the nature. In this study, a non-conventional time domain nuclear magnetic resonance (TD-NMR) pulse sequence: magic sandwich echo (MSE) was used to detect the adulteration of honey by glucose syrup (GS) and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) accompanied with T1 and T2 relaxation times. Also, fast field cycling NMR (FFC-NMR) relaxometry and multivariate analysis were performed to investigate the adulteration.
Results: Higher maltose in GS and changing glucose to water ratio of HFCS gave high correlation with the crystal content values. In HFCS adulteration, two separate populations of protons having different T2 values were detected and T1 times were also used to determine GS adulteration. Addition of GS increased T1 while addition of HFCS increased T2 , significantly.
Conclusion: The results showed that it is possible to differentiate the unadulterated and adulterated honey samples by using TD-NMR relaxation times and crystal content values obtained by the MSE sequence. By FFC-NMR relaxometry, not only GS addition but also the amount of GS was examined. The multivariate analysis technique of principal component analysis was able to distinguish the types of adulterants. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.
Keywords: FFC-NMR; TD-NMR; adulteration; honey; magic sandwich echo (MSE); principal component analysis (PCA).
© 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.