Characterisation of Maltese honeys by Melissopalynology

Abstract

Melissopalynology focuses on the forensic study of pollen revealed in a honey sample (Ponnuchamy et al., 2014). This kind of study is very influential on the investigation of fraudulent practices related to commercial honey (Olga et al., 2012) such as adulteration and mislabelling. The latter is an act which requires blending local honey with foreign honey and claiming the resultant sample to be entirely of local produce, consequently misleading consumers. Mislabelling is considered to be a serious fraud since the trend in the prices of honey relate to their genuineness, which varies predominantly by location (Ruoff & Bogdanov, 2004). Such practices are also thought to occur on the Maltese Islands. Chetcuti (2015) claims that this has become a problem for Maltese honey; which is considered unique due to its distinct physical and chemical attributes to honey found elsewhere (Duca, 2014). This study included extracting pollen from collected honey samples for microscopical analysis. Pollen counts and identified families in honey samples were then statistically and graphically represented to allow characterization between unifloral and multifloral honeys. The season of harvest of some honeys were also deduced. The findings in this study were that the Lotus spp and Hedysarum spp are possibly dominant plant species in authentic Maltese honeys. On the other hand, only one sample seemed to not comply with the whole process of this study; low frequency pollen grains in this sample led for it to be rendered as a victim of fraudulent practices such as ultra-filtering or mislabelling of the product.