Testing DNA in Australian honey reveals floral sources
We tested DNA in 15 different honeys from across Australia and found the bees had mostly fed on eucalypt flowers and the flowers of related plants in the Myrtaceae family. © COPYRIGHT Liz Milla
Postdoctoral Fellow with the Environomics Future Science Platform at CSIRO, Dr Liz Milla, has been testing DNA in Australian honey and it reveals the main floral sources used by the bees.
Dr Milla and colleagues tested 15 different honeys from across Australia and found most were dominated by eucalypts and related plants in the Myrtaceae family.
The DNA-based method is a fast and accurate way to identify the floral composition of Australian honey which could be used for a honey certification program to confirm the floral composition and provenance of commercial honey.
You can read the full story at CSIRO News “CSIRO finds sticky fingerprints reveal true origins of honey.”
Or read the research paper “Pollen DNA metabarcoding identifies regional provenance and high plant diversity in Australian honey” published in Ecology and Evolution by authors Liz Milla, Kale Sniderman, Rose Lines, Mahsa Mousavi-Derazmahalleh and Francisco Encinas-Viso available at: http://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7679