NSF Award
2327747
The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in the area of honey adulteration detection. Honey adulteration which is the process of deliberately adding adulterants such as corn, cane, beet, and rice syrups in honey can have significant economic and organoleptic consequences. The proposed technology will allow honey importers, packers, and retailers, as well as food authentication agencies to quickly track the authenticity of their honey products at each step of the supply chain by quantifying the abovementioned adulterant syrups in a facile and convenient manner. This will significantly improve the product’s authenticity and traceability. Further, in situ testing for the presence of honey adulterants as well as floral and geographic fingerprinting will allow various honey market segments to demand the appropriate price for their pure honey products in the global market. With food fraud continuing to escalate globally, the food authenticity market is expected to grow to $8.3 billion (USD) by 2023. Adulterated honey constitutes 7% of food fraud cases, amounting to $581 million (USD) by 2023 in total market size disruption.<br/><br/>This I-Corps project is based on the development of a portable mid-infrared spectrometric device and a smartphone application system that can simultaneously quantify the presence of various syrups (i.e., corn, cane, beet, and rice) as well as sugar content (i.e., glucose, fructose, and sucrose) in honey in less than 2 minutes. Current methods for detecting these adulterants in honey are considered expensive, time consuming, archaic, and cumbersome. Most of these tests are being conducted via third-party laboratories using expensive and complex analytical equipment. The smartphone application system will contain the research group’s proprietary developed multivariate calibration system that can simultaneously quantify the presence of the aforementioned adulterants in honey in a facile, convenient, and affordable manner using the mid-infrared spectrometric device. Further, the multivariate calibration algorithmic system will also feature aspects related to determining the floral and geographical origin of honey.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
