An updated review of extraction and liquid chromatography techniques for analysis of phenolic compounds in honey

Over the past decade, the measurement of phenolics and flavonoids in honey has received much attention, which is attributed to their broad spectrum of beneficial pharmacological activity and their potential to address issues related to the authenticity and botanical origin of honey. Due to their high variability in structural and physicochemical properties, the separation, detection and identification of these molecules in honey is challenging. Among all the chromatography-driven techniques, liquid chromatography (LC) is one of the most popular and powerful tools for the analysis of phenolics and flavonoids. In particular, the coupling of LC to various detectors, especially mass spectrometry, has enabled relatively fast tentative identification and accurate quantitative and qualitative analysis of polyphenolic compounds in honey. In this review, a survey of the recent considerations and developments in the application of extraction strategies and LC-related techniques for polyphenolics determination in honey during the past decade is provided. The review will also feature future trends of LC-based polyphenolics analysis, with opportunities for high-resolution multidimensional LC analysis that offers significantly higher total peak capacities.