2-acetylfuran-3-glucopyranoside as a novel marker for the detection of honey adulterated with rice syrup.

The determination of honey authenticity is of importance to ensure its quality and safety. There is an urgent need of effective methods to detect adulterated honey. A simple, rapid, and effective HPLC-DAD method was developed to detect honey adulteration by rice syrup, using a characteristic compound from rice syrup, which is presently difficult to detect by current analytical methods. The characteristic compound was identified as 2-acetylfuran-3-glucopyranoside (AFGP) by MS and NMR. Based on HPLC analyses, the average concentration of AFGP was 92 ± 60 mg/kg in rice syrup. However, AFGP was not detected in any of the natural honey samples, so it could be used as a marker for the detection of honey adulteration by rice syrup. The developed method enabled a rapid detection of honey samples adulterated with 10% rice syrup. Using the developed method, 16 out of 186 honey samples from some markets were found to be adulterated with rice syrup.