Resumen de Exploring the Composition and Authenticity of Honey and Syrup Samples Using Quantitative NMR Spectroscopy and Principal Component Analysis in an Upper-Year Undergraduate Analytical Environmental Course
Jeremy R. Gauthier, Darcy Burns, Jack Sheng, Jessica C. D'eon
The adulteration of food products, including honeys and syrups, is of growing concern in global food markets. Detecting adulterated food products can be difficult using traditional analytical methodologies because of complex sample matrices or poor separation of key compounds. NMR is an analytical tool that circumvents some of these issues by providing a snapshot of chemical components in a sample mixture with minimal and unbiased sample preparation. In this upper-year undergraduate and graduate laboratory, students are introduced to NMR as an analytical tool through the analysis of a honey or syrup sample of their choice. Simple sugars in honeys or syrups are quantified using a single point internal standard, while the NMR signals arising from the complex organic mixture of amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and oils found in these syrups are compared against a sample data set using principal component analysis. The experiment highlights the benefits and challenges of NMR as an analytical tool, demonstrating the simplicity of sample preparation and single-point calibration, as well as the limitations of instrument sensitivity and signal resolving power.
