Stable isotope analysis for authenticity testing of honey

Eurofins provides reliable performance in stable isotope testing by ¹³C EA/LC-IRMS

July 2021. Eurofins Food Integrity Control Services in Ritterhude, Germany, provides state-of-the-art honey authenticity testing with the most advanced technologies like ¹³C EA/LC-IRMS, ^1H NMR, and LC-HRMS (please see our page Authenticity analysis of honey).

Ensuring constant analytical performance

Within the scope of ISO 17025 accreditation, the analytical performance and accurateness of results have to be evaluated regularly by participation in independent proficiency tests or, if not available, other comparable interlaboratory trials. Since 2019, the FIT-PTS proficiency testing scheme for isotopic analysis of food has implemented a scheme for the ¹³C EA/LC-IRMS analysis of honey to detect added C4 and C3 sugars. This method has been published in 2008^[1] and has quickly become a recognized method for the detection of honey adulteration. In the EU coordinated control plan for honey, the Joint Research Centre of the EU Commission has adopted this method for the assessment of honey adulteration^[2]. The method is currently subject to harmonisation at the EU level within the CEN Technical Committee 460 “Food Authenticity”^[3].

Excellent results in proficiency tests

Stable isotope analysis results in the proficiency test

Eurofins Food Integrity Control Services is regularly participating in the FIT-PTS ¹³C EA/LC-IRMS proficiency test scheme with two rounds per year and has achieved excellent results in the five subsequent test rounds taken place so far. The achieved z-scores in the first proficiency test of 2021 were better than ± 0.5 for all measured parameters (d¹³C protein, d¹³C honey, d¹³C fructose, d¹³C glucose, d¹³C disaccharides, d¹³C trisaccharides), while the maximum acceptable tolerance is  ± 2.0 for successful participation. This demonstrates the continuously excellent and reliable performance of ¹³C EA/LC-IRMS testing at Eurofins, which is essential to achieve a valid and reproducible authenticity assessment of honey.

Please contact us

Do you have any further questions about 13C EA/LC-IRMS testing or honey authenticity testing in general? Please do not hesitate to contact our honey experts.

References

[1] Elflein, L., Raezke, KP. Improved detection of honey adulteration by measuring differences between ¹³C/¹²C stable carbon isotope ratios of protein and sugar compounds with a combination of elemental analyzer — isotope ratio mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography — isotope ratio mass spectrometry (δ¹³C-EA/LC-IRMS). Apidologie 39, 574–587 (2008). https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1051/apido:2008042.pdf
[2] European Commission, Food Safety, Coordinated control plans, Honey (2015-17)
[3] European Committee for Standardization; CEN/TC 460/WG 6 - Stable Isotope Analysis