Investigation into the Possibility of Using Pollen in Honey to Identify the Origin of Honey in the Malaysian Context

Pollen types can be used to distinguish Malaysian honey from Chinese and Australian honey. Identification of pollen is therefore a useful tool for proving a adulteration of Malaysian honey by cheap foreign honey.

To overcome the problem of the adulteration of Malaysian honey with cheap foreign honey, the pollen in Malaysian and foreign honey was analysed for:

1. the pollen spectrum, which is the ratio of the frequency of each pollen type in the honey, (Table 21), and
2. the presence of marker pollen i.e. pollen types that are unique to a particular type of honey.

Pollen frequencies of eight honey samples from Malaysia gave consistent results and reflected the major crops or vegetation types where the hives were situated. Thus from the pollen spectrum (Table 21 ) it is possible to distinguish honey from areas where coconut or starfruit is the predominant crop.

Besides the distinctive pollen frequencies for a particular type of honey, Malaysian honey can be distinguished from foreign honeys by the presence of two marker pollen types, namely coconut pollen and the pollen of Leucaena leucocephala.

The sample of Chinese honey (Table 21) did not have a single pollen type in common with Malaysian honey. (These pollen types are at present unidentified due to the lack of reference material on Chinese pollen).

The Australian honey (Table 21 ) contained acacia pollen (which is also sometimes found in Malaysian honey) and eucalyptus pollen (which morphologically is very similar to guava and jambu, Eugenia, pollen). However, the ratio of eucalyptus pollen to other pollen types is much higher, and differences in the types of secondary and minor pollen makes possible the identification of Australian honey.

The sample of orange blossom honey from U.S.A. did not contain any pollen at all. However, it is unlikely to be used to adulterate Malaysian honey as it is more expensive than either Australian or Chinese honey.

This study shows that analysis of the pollen types and their frequencies in honey provides a reliable guide to the origin of the honey.

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