## 1 Introduction  
Honey is one of the top counterfeit food products, representing one of the most expensive forms of sugar, because apart from its appreciated taste, it has an undisputable diet importance from both nutritional and medicinal aspects. Nowadays, consumers are willing to pay a higher price for food commodities that are coming from a specific geographical area. The reasons behind this can be related to the specific agricultural practices, local patriotism, specific properties of the plants growing in a specific region, as well as cultural or economical motivations. Therefore, finding reliable tools for honey recognition in regard to its geographical origin is a strong general interest. Moreover, Romania is one of the most important honey producers at the EU level, and, in this context, developing models able to recognize Romanian honey is of great importance, not only for Romania, but also at the European level, for economic and fair trade reasons [1]. Honey composition consists of about 75% carbohydrates, mainly glucose and fructose, and a small proportion of oligosides. The remaining 20% are water (15-17%), proteins (0.1-3.3%), organic acids (0.6%) and numerous other compounds in lower proportions (i.e.,mineral, volatile compounds) [2; 3]. Its falsification is related to the addition or substitution of some honey ingredients or by false declaration of botanical or geographical origin. The most powerful approach for geographical honey differentiation proved to be the association between the isotope and elemental content through the mean of advanced statistical tools. Isotope ratios nowadays represent an acknowledged method to assess the geographical origin of food commodities [4; 5; 6]. The forensic use of this technology is currently applied in food control; for instance, this technique is used on a routine base for wine origin control. The power of this technique is directly related to the own unique pattern of naturally occurring stable isotopes of carbon (\({}^{12}\)C, \({}^{13}\)C), nitrogen (\({}^{14}\)N, \({}^{15}\)N), hydrogen (\({}^{1}\)H, \({}^{2}\)H) and oxygen (\({}^{16}\)O, \({}^{18}\)O) of each plant that is further transmitted along the subsequent interspecies food chain (plant-animal-final product). The isotope distribution is directly influenced by the physical and/or biochemical properties and also by the geoclimatic conditions that made the stable isotope ratios powerful tools for geographical origin recognition. The composition of honey is influenced by many factors related to the geographical and botanical origin. The content of mineral elements in honey may indicate the presence of components in soil and plants in the region where the honey samples were gathered. The multielemental composition can provide essential information for consumers, which is why the estimation of quality parameters is so important [7]. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is becoming widely accepted in the analysis of food as a sensitive and accurate technique for the determination of major and trace elements [8]. There are many studies in which the classification of honey in terms of the geographical origin was performed based on the estimation of its mineral content and trace elements [9; 10; 11]. The association between the isotope ratios of the light elements (H, C, O, N) and elemental profile, incorporating macrominerals (e.g., Ca, K, Mg, Na, P), microelements (e.g., Fe, Se, Mn, Cu, Zn) and potentially toxic elements (e.g., Pb, Cd, Hg, As), enhances the discrimination potential in regard to the geographical origin. In addition, according to European Commission [12], in the European Union (EU), the geographical origin of honey is a very important criterion to assess the value of this product. Some soil and flower characteristics (pH, mineral content, water availability) vary from region to region and from country to country.