3. Results and discussion
3.1. HPLC chromatogram comparison between honey and starch syrup
For the detection of food falsification in food quality control, the key is to find a notable distinction between the adulterant and authentic food. Furthermore the notable distinction must originate from the adulterant, but do not being contained in the authentic food. Therefore, the HPLC chromatograms of one authentic honey and one rice HFS were compared in Fig. 1 by overlaying signals to see fine difference between them. Most of the two chromato- grams were essentially coincident except one small peak at
15.25 min retention time on the investigated HFS chromatogram. This small peak can be seen clearly in the enlarged inset figure. In contrast, no swelling slope was observed on the base line of honey chromatogram at the same retention time. Whether this small peak of the HFS chromatogram can be taken as a notable dis- tinction between honey and syrup must be validated through a detail inspection on a lot of authentic honey from various nectar sources or geographical origin and various kinds of syrup from dif- ferent producers. Fig. 2 showed HPLC chromatogram of HFS from corn, rice or cavassa starch (Fig. 2(a)–(d)), oligoisomaltose (Fig. 2(e)) and oxyl-oligosaccharide syrup (Fig. 2(f)) produced by different producers in China.