Mineral and volatile composition of agua-mel from Portugal

Agua-mel (honey–water) is a typical honey-based product produced by the Portuguese beekeepers, particularly in southern Portugal. Agua-mel was characterized by mineral content and volatiles contents. Mineral content evaluation was performed based on a random sampling of 14 samples from a total of 16 samples provided by local producers. Mineral content showed that potassium predominated in agua-mel samples (1270–4105 mg/kg). The concentration of aluminium in one sample was tenfold higher (5.8 mg/kg) than in the remaining samples (0.3–0.6 mg/kg). Agua-mel volatiles were isolated by hydrodistillation and analysed by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) from a subset of eight samples. Cluster analysis showed two poorly correlated clusters (S corr