A continuous spectrophotometric system for the discrimination/determination of monosaccharides and oligosaccharides in foods Original Research Article

A simple, rapid method for the spectrophotometric discrimination of monosaccharides from the oligosaccharide fraction of fruit juice, jam, syrup and honey samples is proposed. The sample, in alkaline medium, is directly introduced into a flow system and passed through an activated carbon column for its decolourization; then, a volume of 200 μl is injected into the derivatising reagent stream to start the analytical reaction, which takes place at 85°C. The two fractions are discriminated on the basis of the different colours of the derivatives formed; thus, the derivatives of the monosaccharides are yellow while those of the di- and trisaccharides are violet-carmine. The two fractions are monitored at 400 and 540 nm, respectively. Sucrose gives no reaction as it is a non-reducing sugar. The proposed method allows reducing sugars contents from 0.01% to 0.80% w/v to be determined with an average relative standard deviation of 4.5% and a sampling frequency of 10 h−1. The proposed method was validated by applying it to two milk-based and sugar candidate artificial CRMs, with good correlation. The detection limits achieved (0.01% w/v for maltose, lactose and maltotriose at 540 nm) allow adulteration of fruit juices with high fructose syrup from starch at the 4% level to be detected.