Abstract

Honey consists of pollen grains collected by honeybees and pollen analysis of honey will assist in the identification of plant species origin. The identification of different plant species is vital as they contribute towards the composition of honey and helps to verify honey authenticity. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the floral sources, botanical and geographical origins of the collected honey samples. Twenty types of honey were collected from six states in West Coast of Malaysia and pollen analyses were carried out. The melissopalynological methods used in this study were, pollen acetolysis to identify the pollen types using their morphology and pollen count to recognize the dominant pollen and calculate percentage of abundance. Analyses of the honey samples from 20 areas of West Coast of Malaysia revealed the occurrence of different types of pollens from 34 different plant families. Four honey samples were unifloral and the rest were multifloral. Predominant pollen of unifloral honey from Kedah (Kubang Pasu and Padang Terap districts) contained Jacaranda obtusifolia of Bignoniaceae family, from Jasin district of Melaka contained Hevea brasiliensis of Euphorbiaceae family and sample from Gertak Sanggul district of Penang contained Cucumis melo of Cucurbitaceae family. In conclusion, Malaysian honey can be recognized by the presence of coconut (Cocos nucifera) and palm oil (Elaeis guineensis) pollens, which are important food sources and are found to occur in almost every local honey and stingless bee honey samples. These studies significant to examine the purity of honey and prevent fraud adulteration of the honey in Malaysia.

Keywords: melissopalynological, honey geographical origins, acetolysis, multifloral, unifloral