QUALITY AND ANTIOXIDANT PROPERTIES OF HONEY FROM URBANIZED AREAS

Background. Honey is a natural product, the quality of which plays a significant role in shaping the level of health-promoting features. These properties include: nutritional, anti-allergic, neuroprotective, cardioprotective, prebiotic, probiotic, antioxidant, bactericidal and virucidal effects. The honey quality depends on many factors, such as: origin and type of honey, environmental factors (the location of the apiary, climate, weather, the presence of plant protection products and environmental pollution) and factors dependent on the beekeeper (temperature, packing and method of keeping bees). The aim of this study was to assess the quality of honey from urbanized areas, including antioxidant properties. It was hypothesized that honey originating from urban locations is not worse in terms of quality than honey from agricultural or forested areas. In this work, an attempt was made to assess the quality of 35 honey samples from urbanized areas throughout Poland, in terms of physicochemical parameters (the content of: water, sugars, sucrose, 5-HMF, the level of: acidity, diastase number) and color parameters. Additionally, antioxidant potential, i.e. antiradical activity (AA) and the total polyphenol content (TP) were determined. Results and conclusions. As a result of the tests conducted, it was found that all quality parameters of the honey tested met the requirements specified in applicable legal regulations. Only the content of substances insoluble in water turned out to be too high. Their antioxidant activity, defined as the total content of polyphenols and the ability to scavenge DPPH radicals, is characteristic of light honeys. It can therefore be concluded that the tested honey from urbanized areas was characterized by the quality and antioxidant properties that did not differ from the quality and properties of Polish honey originating from agricultural locations.