CHAPTER 24: Food Sources and Analytical Approaches for Maltose Determination

Maltose (4-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-α-D-glucose) is a crystalline, fermentable disaccharide composed of two D-glucose units. It is a reducing sugar, implying that one of its two sugars may form with an aldehyde group in solution. Maltose is consumed in different food matrices like raw cereals, vegetables and vegetable products as well as chicken, as a free sugar or can be derived from hydrolysis of more complex saccharides. The human biological hydrolysis of maltose is rapid, and the glucose released appears rapidly in the human blood after a meal. This fact makes maltose analysis an important subject. This chapter summarizes maltose food sources and describes the most suitable analytical methods developed for its determination in food products. Very different techniques, such as non-chromatographic enzymic methodologies and biosensors, and also chromatographic methodologies, such as gas chromatography (GC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) are described together with sample preparation procedures.