methods have been proposed
for the determination of vitamins in honey, unlike for most of the
other minority organic compounds. Besides the early contribution
byKitzeset al.[3]that reportedanarrayofmicrobiologicalmethods
for the determination of B-group vitamins, almost all methods are
devoted to the determination of one specific vitamin. For example,
the concentrationof ascorbic acidhas beenevaluatedby chromato-graphic and titrimetric procedures[4–6], whereas riboflavin and
its vitamers havebeen recentlyanalyzedby liquidchromatography
[7]. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study devoted to the
contemporary determination of the most important water-soluble
vitamins in honey has ever been published.
Driven by our interest in assessing and validating analytical
methods for the determination of minor compounds and elements
in honey [8–12] and honey-based[13] products, we conducted
experimental work to fully validate a RP-HPLC method capable of
determining five water-soluble vitamins (WSV) in honey: vitamin
B2(riboflavin), vitamin B3(nicotinic acid), vitamin B5(pantothenic
acid), vitamin B9(folic acid) and vitamin C (ascorbic acid).