Stage-Associated Physicochemical and Chemical Profiles of a Single Production Run of Tithonia diversifolia Honey Mead: An Exploratory Study.

Mead quality is shaped by both fermentation and subsequent bottle aging, but stage-resolved descriptions that follow one production batch from honey must through fermented mead to aged mead remain scarce, particularly for region-specific single-honey products. Here, mead produced from Tithonia diversifolia honey from Southern Shan State, Myanmar, was characterised at three processing stages: pre-fermentation must (Pre), post-fermentation mead (Post), and mead bottle-aged for 1 year under ambient conditions at 24-28 °C (Aged). Physicochemical parameters were measured in three biologically independent production replicates and analysed statistically. Volatile and non-volatile profiling was performed on a single composite sample per stage, prepared by combining the three replicates, and is therefore descriptive: it characterises one production batch and does not support statistical comparison between stages. Fermentation reduced glucose and fructose from 71.9 ± 0.2 and 86.6 ± 0.8 mg/mL to below the limit of quantification, and both remained below it after aging. Mead pH rose slightly during fermentation (3.80 ± 0.07 to 3.88 ± 0.05) and fell during storage (3.67 ± 0.05), while colour shifted towards the lighter end of the Pfund scale rather than browning. Semi-quantitative electronic-nose analysis detected 60 putative volatile candidates across the sequence. The pre-fermentation profile was the least similar to the others (Pre versus Post, r = 0.16; Pre versus Aged, r = 0.04, against r = 0.38 between Post and Aged), and the post-fermentation profile was dominated by alcohol- and sulfur-associated responses. Twenty-nine candidates were detected only after fermentation, and 17 were shared between the fermented and aged mead, while the aged sample additionally contained candidates, including pentanol, 2-methylpropanoic acid, propyl acetate, 2-methylbutanal, thiophene, and terpinen-4-ol. Untargeted UHPLC-QTOF/MS resolved 10 non-volatile features that differed in detection across the three stages; these were putatively annotated by accurate mass, isotopic fidelity, and MS/MS library matching, with peptides and peptide derivatives forming the largest group. Because no authentic standards were analysed, these annotations remain tentative. Because the profiling data derive from one batch of one monofloral honey fermented with one yeast strain and were not confirmed by orthogonal or sensory methods, the compounds reported here define a candidate feature list for targeted validation in T. diversifolia mead rather than established markers of mead maturation.