# The Total Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activity of Nine Monofloral Honey Types
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Determination of TPC and FRAP  
Among the examined monofloral honey types, oak honey emerged as the honey type with the significantly highest mean total phenolic content (203.7 \(\pm\) 34.8 mg GAE/100 g honey) and mean total antioxidant activity (106.2 \(\pm\) 32.4 mg AAE/100 g honey) (Figure 1). Regarding the total phenolic content, Manuka and chestnut honeys followed oak honey, with their mean values being 179.5 \(\pm\) 33.3 mg GAE/100 g honey, and 149.9 \(\pm\) 34.8 mg GAE/100 g honey, respectively (Figure 1a). Erica, fir, pine and Jerusalem thorn honey demonstrated intermediate average values (133.2 \(\pm\) 24.4 mg GAE/100 g honey, 130.3 \(\pm\) 26.3 mg GAE/100 g honey, 125.2 \(\pm\) 21.3 mg GAE/100 g honey and 105.7 \(\pm\) 30.6 mg GAE/100 g honey, respectively), while thyme and cotton honey showed low average values (87.3 \(\pm\) 20.5 mg GAE/100 g honey, 72.1 \(\pm\) 45.7 mg GAE/100 g honey, respectively). On the other hand, the manuka honey exhibited significantly lower total antioxidant activity than chestnut (59.8 \(\pm\) 24.8 mg AAE/100 g honey), fir (54.9 \(\pm\) 15.0 mg AAE/100 g honey), pine (53.3 \(\pm\) 9.5 mg AAE/100 g honey) and erica (57.1 \(\pm\) 13.8 mg AAE/100 g honey) honey types. Indeed, the total antioxidant activity of manuka honey was similar to the mean \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Honey Type** &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Average Pollen Percentage (\%) \(\pm\) Standard** \\ **Deviation (S.D.)** \\ \end{tabular} & **Pollen Range (\%)** \\ \hline Chestnut & 97.7 \(\pm\) 1.2 & 96–99 \\ \hline Citrus & 9.6 \(\pm\) 10.2 & 3–33 \\ \hline Cotton & 6.4 \(\pm\) 5.2 & 3–17 \\ \hline Erica & 87.8 \(\pm\) 11.6 & 68–99 \\ \hline Jerusalem thorn & 81.2 \(\pm\) 11.2 & 58–95 \\ \hline Thyme & 75.6 \(\pm\) 14.3 & 53–93 \\ \hline Manuka & 79.5 \(\pm\) 17.9 & 55–96 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Average pollen percentage (%), standard deviation and pollen range (%) of blossom monofloral honey types. Figure 1: Total phenolic content (mg GAE/100 g honey) (**a**) and total antioxidant activity (mg AAE/100 g honey) (**b**) of ten monofloral honey types. Note: Different latin letters in each group show statistically significant differences according to [PERSON]’s multiple range test, a = 0.05.  
values found in Jerusalem thorn (31.0 \(\pm\) 10.3 mg AAE/100 g honey), cotton (25.1 \(\pm\) 10.0 mg AAE/100 g honey) and thyme (22.8 \(\pm\) 14.0 mg AAE/100 g honey) honeys. Citrus honeys exhibited both the lowest mean total phenolic content (65.0 \(\pm\) 15.0 mg GAE/100 g honey) and the lowest mean total antioxidant activity (6.4 \(\pm\) 3.5 mg AAE/100 g honey). It is noteworthy that oak honey had approximately three times higher total phenolic content than citrus honey and twice as much as thyme honeys. Additionally, it exhibited about 16 times higher total antioxidant activity than citrus honey and approximately four times more than thyme honeys; two honey types largely preferred by consumers due to their intense aromatic flavor. The predominance of oak honey and chestnut honeys over thyme and citrus honeys was also observed by [PERSON] et al. [31]. The high antioxidant properties of oak honey have also been recognized by other authors [9; 32; 33], although their observed average total phenolic content was lower than the results of our study (120.04 \(\pm\) 18.56, 130.3 \(\pm\) 49.3, and 134.8 \(\pm\) 26.7 mg GAE/100 g honey, respectively). In the case of chestnut honey, the mean value of the total phenolic content we found was slightly higher than the findings of Aker & Nisbet (138.3 \(\pm\) 19.3 mg GAE/100 g honey) and [PERSON] et al. (120.0 \(\pm\) 3.0 mg GAE/100 g honey) [34; 35] but lower than the results of [PERSON] and [PERSON] (261.7 mg GAE/100 g honey) [36]. Regarding pine honey, the average total phenolic content of the present research was slightly lower than the values found by [PERSON] et al.