Features reflecting the dielectric properties of matter are used as proxies during chemical and physical analysis, including food fraud detection and quantification. Typically, these are computed from responses to high-energy electromagnetic excitations traversing samples under test. In this work, differential absorbance levels were measured on pure and adulterated honey samples, from low-power radio-frequency waves. Systematic patterns found are reported along with a novel method and index, devised to address honey fraud detection and quantification. Method and setup were designed to serve as a proof of concept for a novel, rapid, non-destructive, portable family of devices. Performance was evaluated on samples prepared on 4 honey types and 5 adulterants, the most referred for this task, operating in the 1.85–3.25 GHz range. Results validated the proposed method and setup. AUROC>0.99 was achieved by the single-target adulterant detector, adjusted R2 > by the two-target concentration estimator.
Acknowledgement
Authors will like to thank honey experts, producers and quality team, at La Moderna (Madrid, Spain) for their interest in our work, recommendations during honey types selection and open discussions on industry needs and current limitations of fraud detection and quality assurance technologies.
