Scientists use special bioactive substances to identify Xinjiang safflower honey

Recently, the innovation team of bee product quality and risk assessment of the Institute of Bee Of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences took Xinjiang safflower honey as the research object and revealed that the special bioactive ingredient - hydroxy safflower yellow pigment A (Safflomin A) contains special bioactive ingredient in Xinjiang safflower honey, which provides a theoretical basis for the development, application and quality control of safflower nectar in Xinjiang. The results of the research were published online in Food Chemistry.

The quality characteristics and nutritional function of honey are closely related to the honey source plants, bee species, production environment, climate, etc., and the differences between different varieties of honey are significant. Clarifying the quality characteristics and nutritional functions of different varieties of honey, especially characteristic honey, is conducive to explaining that honey "knows its good, does not know why it is good", and also helps to answer the key issues that restrict the realization of "high quality and good price" such as "unclear characteristics or functional components" and "indistinguishable from other regions or varieties of honey", so as to achieve the purpose of seeking product sales highlights, helping enterprises to build high-quality characteristic honey brands, expanding industrial scale, and improving product public acceptance and added value.

Xinjiang safflower has a long history and a wide distribution area, and it is planted in the vast plain areas north and south of the Tianshan Mountains. Zhang Hua's "Natural History" of the Jin Dynasty said that the red flowers in the Central Plains were "planted by Zhang Qian in the Western Regions", which can be known as one of the products on the Silk Road. The "Treatise on Miscellaneous Diseases" of the Eastern Han Dynasty said: "Sixty-two kinds of winds for women are the stinging of qi and blood in the abdomen, and the red and blue flowers are the masters of the wine." The "Compendium of Materia Medica" says that it can "activate blood, moisturize, relieve pain, disperse swelling, and pass menstruation.". It is quite popular with customers at home and abroad.

Although Xinjiang safflower is an important source plant of honey powder, due to its distribution and geographical environment limitations, its development and utilization at home and abroad are still insufficient. The team's research shows that Western honey bees can transfer the bioactive ingredients in safflower into honey through the process of sucking nectar from safflower to brew honey.

Combined with the team's scientific research accumulation of other characteristic honey characteristic substances in the early stage, a large number of high-resolution mass spectrometry data were obtained by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and then based on non-target binding targeted metabolomics technology, compared with its plant sources, it was found that Xinjiang safflower honey contained a rich and unique bioactive ingredient - hydroxy safflower yellow pigment A (Safflomin A).

It is reported that hydroxycercoperin A is a compound with a single chalcone glycoside structure, which is the most effective water-soluble site of the pharmacological effect of safflower, which can inhibit the aggregation and release of platelets induced by platelet activator factors, competitively inhibit the binding of platelet activators to platelet receptors, and is the active ingredient of safflower yellow pigment. This discovery can be used as a characteristic marker of safflower honey and can be applied as a quality grading marker, which provides an important basis for the development and application of safflower honey in Xinjiang.

The research has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Industrial Technology System, and the Science and Technology Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. (Li Chen)

Related thesis information: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.130584

Source: China Science Daily