Exploring enzyme variation in honey as a marker for quality

Abstract

The physicochemical properties of honey, including enzyme activity, moisture content, sugars, and pH, are crucial for understanding its quality, authenticity, and potential uses. This understanding is essential for setting standards to distinguish pure from adulterated honey, fostering consumer trust, and ensuring regulatory compliance. While previous research has often focused on individual factors influencing honey quality, a comprehensive, multifactorial analysis of enzymatic activity across different bee species has been less explored in response to varying heat treatments and adulteration levels. This study specifically investigated the combined impact of bee species, adulteration, and processing on honey's enzymatic activities. It was found that stingless bee honey consistently exhibited the highest enzyme values, with remarkable levels of diastase (58.533 DN), invertase (49.353 IN), glucose oxidase (23.057 U/g), and catalase (21.870 U/g). The findings also clearly show that heat treatment leads to enzyme inactivation, with almost complete loss of activity at 120°C. Furthermore, adulteration with 50% sugar syrup significantly altered honey properties, increasing moisture and pH while dramatically reducing enzyme activity. These results strongly emphasize enzyme activity as a critical and highly indicative measurement of honey's richness and authenticity, influenced by honey type, purity, and quality parameters. This research confirms the reliability of enzyme activity as a key indicator for honey quality and authenticity, which has direct implications for consumer protection and regulatory oversight. To further ensure global honey quality, future investigations should delve into the specific mechanisms of enzyme denaturation under various processing conditions. Developing rapid, on-site detection methods for adulteration based on enzymatic profiles would also be a valuable contribution.