Development of HPAEC-PAD method for carbohydrates analysis to characterize monofloral honey in comparison with HPLC-RI

Honey is a unique natural product obtained by processing flowers nectar or plants manna, used as sweetener or in food industry due to its nutritive, therapeutic and dietetic quality. A simple, fast with good sensitivity HPAEC-PAD analytical method has been developed for determination and quantification of carbohydrates in honey. A good separation of seventeen components was achieved within 28 minutes of run time and 13 components were determined and quantified: two monosaccarides (glucose, fructose), six disaccharides (sucrose, isomaltose, maltose, kojibiose, nigerose, palatinose) and four trisaccarides (isomaltotriose, erlose, panose, melezitose). The technique allows the simultaneous determination of minor ad major saccharides and without pretreatment of sample that, always, causes the loss of minor sugars. The analytical method was applied to honeys of different botanical origin, and the performance of this method was validated according to range, linearity, calibration curves, limit of detection and limit of quantification in comparison with HPLC-RI, that is used as official method. Compared with HPLC-RI, HPAEC-PAD was more sensitive, faster, with high specificity and with an improved peaks resolution. So HPAEC-PAD would be preferred method for a complete quantification of all sugars in honey as a faster, more selective and sensitive technique to control the fraud in honey and to evaluate the sugar markers.