Honey Differentiation Using Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy Analysis and the Employment of Machine-Learning-Based Authentication Models

Due to rising concerns regarding the adulteration and mislabeling of honey, new directives at the European level encourage researchers to develop reliable honey authentication models based on rapid and cost-effective analytical techniques, such as vibrational spectroscopies. The present study discusses the identification of the main vibrational bands of the FT-Raman and ATR-IR spectra of the most consumed honey varieties in Transylvania: acacia, honeydew, and rapeseed, exposing the ways the spectral fingerprint differs based on the honey's varietal-dependent composition. Additionally, a pilot study on honey authentication describes a new methodology of processing the combined vibrational data with the most efficient machine learning algorithms. By employing the proposed methodology, the developed model was capable of distinguishing honey produced in a narrow geographical region (Transylvania) with an accuracy of 85.2% and 93.8% on training and testing datasets when the <i>Trilayered Neural Network</i> algorithm was applied to the combined IR and Raman data. Moreover, acacia honey was differentiated against fifteen other sources with a 87% accuracy on training and testing datasets. The proposed methodology proved efficiency and can be further employed for label control and food safety enhancement.