Honey profiling by 1H‑NMR spectroscopy
To characterize the compounds and properties of our honey samples, we
used H1 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy
(hereafter H1-NMR spectroscopy), a state-of-the-art analytical technique
increasingly used alongside chemometrics statistical approaches for the
qualitative and quantitative control of honeys, as well as to assess the
botanical origin of honeys and to quantify their major constituting
compounds (Schievano et al., 2012; Ohmenhaeuser et al., 2013). H1-NMR
spectroscopy was carried out on all 240 samples described above at the
laboratories of Quality Services International GmbH (QSI, Bremen,
Germany) following the method described in Noiset et al, 2022. We
quantified 36 compounds grouped in five categories : sugars (n=10),
organic acids (n=3), amino acids (n=8), fermentation markers (i.e., all
the compounds involved in sugar transformation trough alcoholic, acetic
and lactic fermentation; n=10) and anti-microbial compounds (n=5)
(Supplementary Table 3).
Another set of physicochemical data of honey samples of Apis
mellifera (n = 10) from Mexico analysed according to the protocol
described previously at the QSI laboratories were pooled with our
dataset of 90 Apis spp. samples; this provided a better balance
between the number of honey bee and stingless bee samples analysed in
this study.