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The super-food Manuka honey, a comprehensive review of its analysis and authenticity approaches

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Abstract

Manuka honey (MH) stands out from other honey types as a unique super-food with clinically proven antimicrobial and wound healing activities. Its unique traits and the broad range of applications (i.e. food, cosmetics, nutraceuticals /natural health products) have marked up its price 6 to 25 times than other honey types. Concurrent to the increased market demand, more fraudulence of MH emerged. This urged for the employment of analytical tools for the authenticity and quality assessment of MH and has been the focus of many researchers during the last decades. Our main focus was to review the literature dealing with MH authenticity during the period from 2010 to mid-2021 comprehensively via the Scifinder (https://sinfinder.cas.org) and Web of Science (https://webofknowledge.com) research engines. We used “manuka honey analysis”, “manuka honey quality control”, and “manuka honey authenticity” as a search terms, applied Boolean operators ‘AND/OR’ combination, performing in Jan 2017 from the following electronic databases. The state-of-the-art analytical approaches and respective chemical markers of MH are highlighted. The present study capitalizes on the most updated methodologies employed for the quality control and analysis of MH to ensure its authenticity and adulteration detection. The unique constituents of MH allowed for its successful discrimination through various analytical platforms, including mass spectrometry coupled to suitable chromatographic separation (i.e. GC–MS and LC–MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and fluorescence analysis. Moreover, chemometric tools present potential for MH discrimination and has yet to be capitalized more upon for MH quality control analysis.

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Abbreviations

MH:

Manuka Honey

QC:

Quality control

UMF:

Unique Manuka Factor

GC–MS:

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

HPLC:

High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

NMR:

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

ED-XRF:

Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence

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Funding

Dr M. A. Farag thanks the Alexander von Humboldt-foundation, Germany, for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Phytochemistry and Plant Systematics Department, Division of Pharmaceutical Industries, National Research Centre, Cairo, 12622, Egypt

    Nesrine M. Hegazi

  2. Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura, 35516, Egypt

    Ghada E. Abd Elghani

  3. Pharmacognosy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Cairo, 11562, Egypt

    Mohamed A. Farag

  4. Chemistry Department, School of Sciences & Engineering, The American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt

    Mohamed A. Farag

Authors
  1. Nesrine M. Hegazi
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  2. Ghada E. Abd Elghani
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  3. Mohamed A. Farag
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Contributions

NMH, Literaure survey, collection and writing the MS. GEA, Literature survey and collection. MAF, Review design and conceptualization, revising and editing the MS.

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Correspondence to Nesrine M. Hegazi or Mohamed A. Farag.

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Hegazi, N.M., Elghani, G.E.A. & Farag, M.A. The super-food Manuka honey, a comprehensive review of its analysis and authenticity approaches. J Food Sci Technol 59, 2527–2534 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-021-05181-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-021-05181-7

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