Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Food Control, cilt.188, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Honey fraud and mislabeling threaten product integrity and consumer trust worldwide. DNA metabarcoding of short plant markers offers a high-throughput alternative to melissopalynology for verifying botanical provenance. Here, we assess the applicability of trnL (p6-loop) metabarcoding to authenticate honey labels and to benchmark a pooled-sample strategy that aims to capture broader floral diversity. We analyzed 20 Turkish honeys spanning blossom and honeydew types. All samples were amplified individually with the trnL p6-loop primers, after which equal volumes of verified amplicons were combined into a single pooled library for sequencing. In parallel, one blossom honey (Highland Blossom Honey, HBH) which also contributed to the pool — was sequenced as an independent library to serve as an internal validation control. Reads were filtered and taxonomically assigned against GenBank with a ≥97% identity threshold. Across datasets, ≥97% identity matches supported most label-declared taxa, and genus-level agreement exceeded 80%. Pooling increased diversity recovery (higher richness and Shannon index) and improved the detection of both dominant and rare taxa that can be underrepresented in single samples. The individually sequenced blossom honey confirmed key label taxa, while the pool provided a landscape-level botanical profile consistent with declared compositions across products. Our results demonstrate that trnL metabarcoding, particularly when combined with pooled sampling, is an effective tool for honey authentication and floral traceability. Limitations primarily reflect reference-database gaps that can restrict species-level resolution; expanding regional barcoding libraries will further improve accuracy. Overall, the pooled-sample strategy offers a cost-efficient way to screen floral composition at scale while individual analyses can be retained when product-specific attribution is required.