India’s First Honey Testing Laboratory In Gujarat

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Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shri NarendraSingh Tomar inaugurated
‘Two Days Online Training Programme on Scientific Honey bee production’ conducted by NDDB.

An institution of national importance set up by an Act of Parliament of India.
NDDB’s subsidiaries include IDMC Limited-Anand, Mother Dairy, Delhi, NDDB Dairy Services, Delhi and Indian Immunologicals Limited, Hyderabad.
To finance and support producer-owned and controlled organisations.

Benefits

The development comes after National Bee Board’s decade-long wait for a government testing facility for honey.
Till recently, the exporters were required to ship their samples to Germany for testing.
The testing lab will unlock potential for apiarists to not just get domestic business but also take advantage of exports to the US and Europe.
“Standard quality testing and certifications are the primary requirements and preconditions for exporting honey to the markets such as the US and Europe.
The new lab will test honey as per the norms specified by the food safety regulator FSSAI.
The quality honey will boost exports and ensure better rates for farmers,” said Tomar adding that this move will contribute to India’s efforts to double farmers’ income by 2025.

The lab — set up with ₹7.7-crore funding from the government.
It has been accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) and Export Inspection Council.
It has also got an approval from FSSAI as a national reference lab.

The government has allocated ₹500 crore for bee-keeping infrastructure development under Atmanirbhar Bharat package.
NDDB Chairman Dilip Rath stated that
A proposal has been sent to the Union Agriculture Ministry to provide Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) testing to identify ‘Country of Origin’.
Perhaps the most common form of honey adulteration is the addition of cheap sugar syrups, such as corn syrup to honey to increase the volume of product available for sale.
The resultant mixture is labelled and priced as pure honey, and so consumers unknowingly receive an inferior product.
The inverted sugars that are naturally present in honey, typically glucose and fructose, are sweeter, more soluble and less likely to support microbial growth than the sugars
Historically, honey was tested for adulteration by analysing the ratio of the two major isotopes of carbon; Carbon-12 and Carbon-13.
However, unscrupulous honey producers have now identified other cheap sugar syrups with a similar Carbon-12:Carbon-13 ratio to the flowering plants from which bees collect nectar.
In contrast, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) analyses a multitude of components.
This makes it incredibly difficult to reproduce the characteristic NMR profile of genuine honey by unscrupulous means.