摘要：The study was conducted through field studies, laboratory and sensory evaluations to ascertain the quality of honey marketed in Kano. Questionnaires were administered to ten honey sellers, five each from the two major honey markets in Kano. Laboratory analyses included moisture, ash, total solids. pH, specific gravity, refractive index, total plate, coliform and total fungal counts. Sensory evaluation using seven-point Hedonic to evaluate appearance, flavour, colour, taste, sweetness, mouth-feel and acceptability was done. Results showed honey business is male dominated business. Honey quality is subjective through observations for colour and thickness as well as mouth-testing for thickness and there is no further processing prior to sales. Moisture content of the samples ranged from 15.24% (KM5) to 19.42% (KW2), ash from 0.2% (KM4 and KW4) to 0.70% (KW2); total solids 80.62% (KW2) to 84.82% (KM5). The specific gravity is the same (1.4) for all the ten samples. The refractive index ranged from 14.78 (KM4 and KW5) to 17.38 (KM1) while the pH ranged from 3.71 (KM3) to 4.08 (KM1). The matches-lighting and coliform tests were all negative for all the ten samples. Fungal counts were all negative except for samples KW3 and KW5 where mold growth was observed. There were growths in all the samples for total plate count. The sensory scores for appearance, flavour, colour, taste, sweetness, mouth-feel and overall acceptability were all above 4.0 on a 7-point Hedonic scale. Generally results of finding showed that all the honey samples were within acceptable standards of good quality honey
关键词：Honey; markets; physicochemical; quality and sensory
