Honey consumption, safer and free of toxins

A team of researchers from the URJC has developed a rapid and sustainable analytical method based on miniaturized techniques for the determination of natural toxins in honey.

Writing / Irene Vega

At the URJC, there is a great commitment to sustainability that involves the development of methodologies that comply with the principles of Green Analytical Chemistry, using automatic and miniaturized techniques in sample treatment that allow contaminants in food to be determined at very low concentrations. These techniques are used together with other instrumental techniques of great potential such as liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry, which allows the separation, identification and quantification of a large number of components in the samples with high sensitivity.

An example of this is one of the works carried out by the consolidated Research Group in Analytical Chemistry Applied to the Environment, Food and Drugs (GQAA-MAF) recently posted in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. This article describes the development of a miniaturized strategy based on the novel μSPEed® technique for the simultaneous microextraction of 23 toxic alkaloids in honey samples. “The method requires only 3 minutes of extraction per sample, using a minimum amount of sample and solvents (on the order of microliters). The usefulness of the method was proven to control the presence of alkaloids in monofloral (rosemary, orange blossom or forest) and multifloral honeys,” explains Dr. Isabel Sierra Alonso, coordinator of the GQAA-MAF group.

The work has been developed within the framework of the EVALKALIM project, financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency, and the PROCESALK project of the Call for Projects to Promote Research for Young Doctors of the URJC.

Sustainable analytical methods to guarantee food safety from the URJC

The method developed by the URJC scientific team represents an advance in the control of food safety, in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way, contributing to the achievement of some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda. , such as SDG 12 (Responsible production and consumption) and SDG 13 (Climate action), in addition to SDG 2 (Zero hunger), which includes food security among its goals.

“In the last 5 years, the number of food alerts in Europe related to the presence of natural toxins in foods has increased exponentially. Among these toxins, the pyrrolizidine and tropane alkaloids stand out, which are produced naturally by some plants as a defense mechanism. These compounds can enter the food chain through different routes and cause toxic effects that put the health of consumers at risk. Therefore, it is essential to control the levels of these alkaloids in foods,” emphasizes Dr. Sierra Alonso.