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Comparing the biological properties and chemical profiling of chestnut bee pollen and bee bread collected from Anatolia

  • Soil and Agricultural Microbiology - Research Paper
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Abstract

Bee bread (BB) and bee pollen (BP) are accepted as functional food and considered in medical properties due to its important bioactive components. These bee products show different biological properties, but researches on these aspects have not been clear yet. In present study, Anatolian BB and BP extracts were analyzed for the first time for their pollen type, total phenolic (TPC) and flavonoid content (TFC), and antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. Samples were analyzed for their antimicrobial efficacy by the agar well diffusion and MIC methods. HPLC analysis was used to identify the compounds in the BB and BP samples. Antioxidant activity was measured by the FRAP and DPPH methods. As a result of microscopy for pollen identification, Fagaceae family was dominant. Phenolic compound analysis showed that the amounts of p-coumaric acid and rutin were found to be the highest in BB and BP, respectively. Stronger antioxidant activity was obtained from BP. MIC values of BB were range from 250 to 12.5 μg/mL. The most susceptible bacterium was Mycobacterium smegmatis. The extract of BP was effective on all gram-negative bacteria with doses range from 250 μg/mL to 500 μg/mL. The lowest MIC value was detected with the concentration of 12.5 μg/mL against M. smegmatis. Anatolian BB and BP could be considered as a functional foods due to antioxidant activity and may be beneficial in the management and treatment of pathogenic bacteria because of high antimicrobial activity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beekeeping Research Development and Application Centre, Düzce University, 81620, Düzce, Turkey

    Emine Sonmez & Meral Kekecoglu

  2. Faculty of Science, Department of Biology, Düzce University, 81620, Düzce, Turkey

    Meral Kekecoglu

  3. Espiye Vocational School, Giresun University, 28600, EspiyeGiresun, Turkey

    Huseyin Sahin

  4. Faculty of Art and Science, Department of Biology, Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, 53100, Rize, Turkey

    Arif Bozdeveci & Sengul ALPAY Karaoglu

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  1. Emine Sonmez
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  2. Meral Kekecoglu
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  4. Arif Bozdeveci
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  5. Sengul ALPAY Karaoglu
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Contributions

Emine Sonmez: experimental study, methodology, writing-reviewing and editing, and visualization. Meral Kekecoglu: providing material, editing, supervision, and validation. Huseyin Sahin: experimental study and editing. Arif Bozdeveci: experimental study. Sengul Alpay Karaoglu: experimental study, providing material, editing, supervision, and validation.

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Correspondence to Emine Sonmez.

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Sonmez, E., Kekecoglu, M., Sahin, H. et al. Comparing the biological properties and chemical profiling of chestnut bee pollen and bee bread collected from Anatolia. Braz J Microbiol 54, 2307–2317 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42770-023-00980-w

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