Dr. Konstantinos Kasiotis
Benaki Phytopathological Institute (BPI) , Greece

Quality is a precondition for success in reaching markets and improving the competitiveness of exporting companies. However, meeting technical requirements poses a challenge to many exporting companies, especially in light of the increase in the number of standards. Countries are imposing an increasing number of standards in order to protect the health and safety of their citizens, and to meet the specific demands and needs of buyers. Brazil, India, China, Mexico and Egypt are World's Largest Orange Production Countries in The world. The companies that want to export their products need up-to-date information about the technical requirements applied, both optional and mandatory, in their target markets. After obtaining this information, these companies must adapt their products and processes to meet the requirements of the export market and demonstrate compliance with them.

he plant B project aims at producing a safe product less of pesticides and of a quality according to the CODEX specifications. , in order to increase export and farmer income.

The presentation has highlighted the honey seasons and hosting plants in Egypt, and showed that the total numbers of hives in Egypt is about 2 million hives producing about 35000tons of honey. As the Ministry of Agriculture has no authority of controlling the fraud in the honey bee . It was proposed to form a national committee of representatives of the ministries of Agriculture, Supply and home trade and public health to conduct traceability by collecting samples of the products of a company started from the farm till the markets, analyzing it and imposing a penalty in case of fraud.

The presentation has shown as per recent information covering the period from 1st of January 2018 till 31 of October 2020 that the Egyptian exports of honey bee and bee wax to 61 countries of Europe, USA, Asia, and Gulf countries African countries, of a total quantity of honey of about 8000 tons for about 17 million $ and a quantity of 428 ton of wax of 730000 US $ .

Since antiquity, honey is known for its nutritional properties and therapeutic effects. Honeybee hives are distributed throughout citrus orchards in most Mediterranean countries (except Spain) to support pollination and honey production. In the frames of PLANT-B, the honey produce is investigated. Hence, an analytical scheme using appropriate sample preparation techniques and principally, liquid and gas chromatographic methods are developed, applied and optimized. The latter embrace honey phytochemicals (potential association with floral origin), quality criteria delineated by the EU Council Directive 2001/110/EC (e.g., sugar content, 5-hydroxymethyl furfural) and pesticides’ residues Preliminary results of the baseline year’s honey samples sugar content showed concentration levels at the citrus honey' bibliographic range. The phytochemicals elucidation is currently underway. Last but not least, pesticide residues analysis, connected to the common practised pest management strategy, displayed low concentrations in honey below the maximum residue levels (MRLs) for limited active substances.

The quality, safety and traceability of monofloral honeys, such as the citrus honey, can be ensured by different methodological approaches including the elemental analysis and the study of the isotopic composition. In this regard, elements such as lead, cadmium and mercury can help discriminating honey that can be used safely, but other elements such as potassium, sodium, phosphorous, iron and manganese can be seen as indicators of the origin of honey. A deep investigation on the process and/or geographic traceability of honey can be carried out through the investigation of the isotopic abundances of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and/or oxygen that can help to identify possible adulteration of honey or the botanical or geographical origin of its main compound (i.e., sugars, water, proteins). Whatever the methodological approach adopted for the of quality, safety and traceability purposes, the data integration through advanced chemometrics as proposed in PLANT-B project, can add value to the analytical efforts revealing major chemical-physical traits discriminating honeys with respect to their quality, but also to their botanical or geographical identity.

Since antiquity, honey is known for its nutritional properties and therapeutic effects. Honeybee hives are distributed throughout citrus orchards in most Mediterranean countries (except Spain) to support pollination and honey production. In the frames of PLANT-B, the honey produce is investigated. Hence, an analytical scheme using appropriate sample preparation techniques and principally, liquid and gas chromatographic methods are developed, applied and optimized. The latter embrace honey phytochemicals (potential association with floral origin), quality criteria delineated by the EU Council Directive 2001/110/EC (e.g., sugar content, 5-hydroxymethyl furfural) and pesticides’ residues Preliminary results of the baseline year’s honey samples sugar content showed concentration levels at the citrus honey' bibliographic range. The phytochemicals elucidation is currently underway. Last but not least, pesticide residues analysis, connected to the common practised pest management strategy, displayed low concentrations in honey below the maximum residue levels (MRLs) for limited active substances.

In Greece, citrus crops play a significant role in the sector of primary agricultural production from tree crops, having the 3rd position after olive and stone trees. As for this production to be sustainable, plant protection is an important parameter with plant protection product as a key input for most convectional cultivation systems. In Greece approximately 90 active substances are authorized in oranges, from which 80 are chemicals and 10 non chemicals. As to be able to successful monitor residues from all chemical pesticides, multiresidue and various single residue methods are employed from official control laboratories. These methods are accredited according to national and EU requirements and give the data for risk assessors to conduct short and long term estimations of the exposure to consumers. Based on latest results from the last years, acute risk cannot be excluded only for specific number of compounds in oranges, grapefruit and mandarins.

Metabolomics is one of the most recent “omics” sciences. It is an ideal tool for the chemical screening and subsequent detailed comparison of the secondary metabolomes revealing the differences/biomarkers among experimental groups. The analysis can be classified either as targeted or untargeted and can be performed by various techniques. The two most commonly used are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Mass Spectrometry coupled to Liquid Chromatography (LC-MS). A typical workflow pipeline for metabolomics analysis include the design of the experiment, sample preparation, data acquisition, data processing and statistical analysis in order to examine clustering formation and to detect the variables that contribute the most to the separation. In house and online databases are employed for the annotation of the metabolites. Software tools are used to predict the molecular formula of unknown metabolites. In the frame of Plant-b the profiling of Greek honeys extracts was obtained by Q-Exactive High Resolution MS & MS/MS platform (Thermo Fisher Scientific) connected to a Dionex Ultimate 3000 UHPLC system (Thermo Scientific™Dionex™). In the next steps of the project the chemical investigation of honey extracts from Egypt and Italy will be accomplished and metabolomics analysis will be performed on honey extracts based on various criteria (e.g. geographical origin, production period, plantation etc.)