Chemometric treatment of simple physical and chemical data for the discrimination of unifloral honeys

In this work, nonspecific physico-chemical parameters were determined in 160 honey samples belonging to the four main botanical categories present in Sardinia Island, Italy (strawberry tree, thistle, asphodel and eucalyptus) in order to develop a discriminant method for determining the botanical origin of honey. All the possible combinations of the seven physico-chemical parameters (pH, free acidity, electrical conductivity, color, total phenolic compounds, FRAP activity, and DPPH activity) measured in the honey samples were evaluated by Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). LDA models led to the prediction of each botanical origin with a very low level of misclassification (typically less than 5%). Since very high levels of correct prediction in cross validation (98.3%) and external validation (100%) were obtained considering only four parameters (i.e. pH, acidity, conductivity and DPPH), these results might allow a fast and easy control of the botanical origin of honeys.