Simultaneous determination of glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose in Omani natural honeys using novel microfluidic paper-based assays and smartphone readout

Natural Omani honey, well known as one the best in the world, is of great importance in the country and more attention should be paid to its quality and authenticity. Sugars are the major constituents of honey and determine its nutritious and energetic value. Therefore, simple and reliable methods are needed for the measurement of sugars in honey to control its quality and adulteration. However, conventional methods are mostly expensive, time consuming and need well trained operators and so, the research is continued to develop a simple, fast and sensitive method, which could be effectively used by the food industries. Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices offer a promising advantages. They can be used to develop simple and portable equipment allowing fast in situ monitoring of raw materials. In this work, the development of lab on-paper-based microfluidic devices using chemiluminescence (CL) and colorimetric detection is proposed for the simultaneous detection of glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose, as the main sugars found in honey. It is based on the specific enzymatic reaction of each sugar, guaranteeing the selectivity of method. Enzyme/enzymes for each sugar will be independently fixed on the paper, using new metal-organic frameworks, which can effectively improve their stability. Finally, the product of enzymatic reactions, H2O2, is measured by simple CL and colorimetric methods. The detection will be simply done using naked eye or more available smartphones. We hope that this research result in the development of miniaturized hand-held devices for the simple determination of sugars in food samples. It is worth mentioning that this work will be done for the first time and there is no similar report in the literature yet.

Natural Omani honey, well known as one the best in the world, is of great importance in the country and more attention should be paid to its quality and authenticity. Sugars are the major constituents of honey and determine its nutritious and energetic value. Therefore, simple and reliable methods are needed for the measurement of sugars in honey to control its quality and adulteration. However, conventional methods are mostly expensive, time consuming and need well trained operators and so, the research is continued to develop a simple, fast and sensitive method, which could be effectively used by the food industries. Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices offer a promising advantages. They can be used to develop simple and portable equipment allowing fast in situ monitoring of raw materials. In this work, the development of lab on-paper-based microfluidic devices using chemiluminescence (CL) and colorimetric detection is proposed for the simultaneous detection of glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose, as the main sugars found in honey. It is based on the specific enzymatic reaction of each sugar, guaranteeing the selectivity of method. Enzyme/enzymes for each sugar will be independently fixed on the paper, using new metal-organic frameworks, which can effectively improve their stability. Finally, the product of enzymatic reactions, H2O2, is measured by simple CL and colorimetric methods. The detection will be simply done using naked eye or more available smartphones. We hope that this research result in the development of miniaturized hand-held devices for the simple determination of sugars in food samples. It is worth mentioning that this work will be done for the first time and there is no similar report in the literature yet.