DNA traces the origin of honey by identifying plants, bacteria and fungi

The regional origin of a food product commonly affects its value. To this, DNA-based identification of tissue remains could offer fine resolution. For honey, this would allow the usage of not only pollen but all plant tissue, and also that of microbes in the product, for discerning the origin. Here we examined how plant, bacterial and fungal taxa identified by DNA metabarcoding and metagenomics differentiate between honey samples from three neighbouring countries. To establish how the taxonomic contents of honey reflect the country of origin, we used joint species distribution modelling. At the lowest taxonomic level by metabarcoding, with operational taxonomic units, the country of origin …