Quality Parameters of Royal Jelly in national and international standards: Specifications, differences and suggestions

Abstract

Royal Jelly is one of the most important beehive products, which has been known for centuries, known as "Honey bee's milk" or "youth elixir" due to its high nutritional value and numerous health promoting properties, RJ is secreted by the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands of young worker bees (Apis mellifera). The chemical composition of Royal jelly varies according to different factors including but not limited to honeybee races, geographical origins, harvesting seasons, foraging sources and feed supplementation offered by beekeepers. Lack of National quality standards for royal jelly in many countries and the variation between the requirements of different national standards for royal jelly has a negative impact on the beekeeping industry because it may impede the trade of royal jelly between countries with different standards for RJ and discourages producers and beekeepers of expanding their businesses. This research article presents a comparison between the quality parameters and requirements imposed by national standards for royal jelly in Egypt and some countries compared with the international standards for RJ which was recently issued in 2016 by the international organization for standardization (ISO 12824:2016). We also investigated the chemical composition and quality parameters of Egyptian royal jelly samples (n=9) which was produced and analyzed during different honey flow seasons. This article aims to highlight the differences between national and international standards for Royal jelly, and shows the necessity to update the national dated standards, states and suggests the adoption of some modern methods for determining authenticity, origin and freshness, which are applicable, cheap, fast and reliable.