Lasers and DNA barcoding help tackle honey fraud

Almost £90m worth of honey was imported into the UK in 2023. However, a European Commission report from the same year found that 46 per cent of 147 honey samples tested were likely to have been adulterated with cheap plant syrups.

Two new pieces of research led by Cranfield University could now lay the foundations for detecting this widespread adulteration of honey. The first, published in Foods 2024, describes how a combination of spatial offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) and machine learning was used to identify fraudulent honey. The non-invasive laser analysis technique was able to rapidly establish the ‘fingerprint’ of each ingredient in the product. Scientists used machine learning to analyse the SORS data, successfully detecting and identifying sugar syrups from various plant sources.

“Honey is expensive, and in demand – and can be targeted by fraudsters which leaves genuine suppliers out of pocket and undermines consumers’ trust,” said research lead Dr Maria Anastasiadi, lecturer in Bioinformatics at Cranfield University.