Prediction of Inverted Cane Sugar Adulteration of Honey by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy

Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy with an attenuated total reflection (ATR) sampling accessory has been used to determine the cane medium invert sugar in 3 different varieties of honey. Predictive models were developed to classify the cane sugar‐adulterated honey samples, using discriminant analysis. Linear discriminant and canonical variate analysis were used to discriminate adulterated honey samples. The optimum classification of 88 to 96.4% was achieved in a validation set, using linear discriminant analysis with the partial least squares (PLS) data compression technique. Calibrations developed to predict the spiked inverted cane sugar concentration in honey with PLS‐1st derivative method gave standard error of prediction (SEP) between 2.8 to 3.6 % w/w.