Desarrollo e innovación en procesos y productos a partir de los productos de las abejas
Authors:   , López Patiño Carmenza Liliana 
Published: March 2023

Amongst bee products, Honey is the most popular, mainly because of its sweetener effect consequently the most consumed and commercialized; nevertheless, beyond this fact there is arguably a raising interest towards its properties which allows its use in a wide range of other applications in different fields, the food sector is one of them. Thanks to its minor components, such as the bioactive constituents, add up another property, an antioxidant capability, a common feature between the bee products. As it happens with honey, propolis also has shown this antioxidant capability thus increasing its commercial applications throughout a search of alternatives uses within the food sector, even more, considering the rising trend towards the use of natural origin products as alternatives of the synthetic traditional offer. Following the aforementioned feature, this doctoral project´s objective was to characterize honey bee and propolis, monitoring their freshness parameters over time and, based on their results to identify the processes and innovative products which would lead to the eventual development of new food matrices originated from each of one them independently and in a mixture. The most abundant components within honey are sugars, thanks to them this a relatively steady product which lifetime spans approximately two years under regular store conditions < 30 °C, RH around 60%, protected from direct solar radiation and bottled in glass flasks. In spite of such steadiness, honey ages and decays over the time, losing its properties and developing substances that signal low quality such as hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). The diastase activity is also a quality indicator, varies as function of the botanical origin and the bees´ contribution, its value reduces over the time. This study´s samples kept their quality characteristics after 2 and 4 years under controlled temperature (21 ± 2 °C) and RH 28% store conditions. By applying high hydrostatic pressures (HHP), it was achieved that 90% for the HMF content and 100% for diastase activity of the samples of this study complied with the honey quality parameters. In order to find new alternatives for the use of honey and propolis, the experiments carried out identified applications as follows: In vegetables as potatos, where propolis extract and peppermint essential oil are blended, it completely suppressed sprout in both potato varieties (cv Monalisa and cv Jaerla) stored at 8 °C and a reduced suppressed sprout of 20% in cv Jaerla stored at 25 °C in a time span of 60 days. Likewise, using a blend with 30% (w/v) of honey and ascorbic acid (0.05% w/v), applied on potatoes minimally processed and slices of potato yielded the most effective PPO restrain effect above 90% and an antioxidant effect, showing a delay of the brownish when pH, color and sensory analysis (texture, aspect and smell) was evaluated at 4 °C during 14 days, signaling the potential natural antioxidant power of these blends. In beef, a positive effect was achieved on fresh veal beef stored at 4 °C during 14 days, showing that a blend of propolis and honeydew (8 and 10 %, respectively) shows an antioxidant and biocide outcome against mesophiles and Enterobacteria, in consequence, it is thought they could be used as natural preservatives. Likewise, the experiments where powdered honey was obtained through lyophilization, the blend of this powder and honey 50% w/w yielded the best moisture and hygroscopic characteristics, therefore, it was used to be added to the chopped beef using 10% and 20% w/w dose. A slowdown of Enterobacteria growth and total aerobic mesophiles were reached with these treatments, proportionally better results were achieved the higher honey’s concentration, but samples color were impacted showing reduced values of L* and a* parameters in the course of 10 days, which suggests that new studies should include a higher number of parameters can be proposed based on the current results.