Characterisation of northwest Moroccan honeys by gas chromatographic–mass spectrometric analysis of their sugar components

Combined gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was used to analyse the sugar composition of honeys from northwest Morocco. This technique allowed the identification and quantification of two monosaccharides, eight disaccharides and three trisaccharides. In addition, characterisation of the main unifloral honeys by principal component analysis (PCA) and stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) was carried out. PCA showed that the cumulative variance was approximately 50%, and about 70% of the samples were correctly classified using SDA, with the best results being obtained for the honeydew honeys (100% correct).