A Preliminary Cost Effective Qualitative Assay for Diastase Analysis in Honey

Abstract

Quality characteristics of honey can be evaluated in terms of some of its biochemical characteristics which are quite unique to honey and not easy to be adulterated. One such important quality index is its diastase enzyme activity. Primary source of diastase in honey is considered to be secretions from the salivary and hypopharyngeal glands of foraging bees. For ease of evaluation, a simple and cost effective “In-vitro Starch Hydrolysis Plate Assay (ISHPA)” is proposed here that has been compared with the existing standard Schade method (Diastase number) and displayed a good correlation (R2=0.93). The proposed method is quite simple, qualitative, cost effective and suitable for routine analysis of diastase activity in different honey samples.