Physical and chemical properties of Ethiopian honey.
1996
Nuru Adgaba
The total production of honey in the country is estimated to be 21,000 t per annum. Most of the honey comes from traditional hives and a large portion of it goes for production of tej, local alcoholic drink. However, today honey is used by large number of people as table honey. When the demand of honey gradually shifted from tej production to table honey its quality becomes a major issue by consumers. So far properties and quality state of Ethiopian honey are not studied. In this work an attempt was made to assess some of physical and chemical properties of honey which are important to the quality of the products. Hence, properties like moisture content, total reducing sugars, sucrose content, mineral content, acidity and hydroxymethylfurfural and diastase activity were tested to characterize the quality of local honey. Results are compared to other countries' official honey standards. The results indicate that most of the honey samples meet the world honey standard and only few samples failed to meet expected standard mainly due to lack of appropriate handling of the product at different levels.
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