An Introduction to Simple Saccharides and Oligosaccharides, and a Decadal Review of Their Analysis in Food by Ion Chromatography and Ion Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry

This paper provides a decadal review of literature describing the analysis of simple saccharides and oligosaccharides in food by ion chromatography pulsed amperometric detection (IC/PAD) and ion chromatography mass spectrometry (IC/MS) as emerging techniques. The concentrations of these saccharides in food have important health implications and affect technical attributes of food quality. Saccharides have been analyzed over many decades using a diverse range of physical, chemical, and chromatographic techniques, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. In the past decade, ion chromatography (IC) has appeared as a contender with substantial benefits over established techniques. It is conducted without sample derivatization, unlike other techniques of comparable accuracy. Limits of detection (LOD) are also comparable, typically 20 μg/L when coupled with a pulsed amperometric detector or 1 mg/kg food using ion chromatography single quadrupole mass spectrometry. This compares to LODs of 2 g/kg food by high performance/liquid chromatography refractive index detector and 2 mg/kg food for gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The main strength of ion chromatography is the specificity/differentiation of simple saccharides, that has resulted in the discoveries of several unreported saccharides in foods. Examples include isomaltose in flour, erlose in stingless bee honey and arabinose, ribose, rhamnose, xylose, mannose, trehalose, maltose and raffinose in paprika. Evolving future advantages of ion chromatography in saccharide analysis include the increasing utilization of mass spectrometry, more work towards a standardized analytical methodology, and the need to investigate new, novel and admixed food types so that instrumentation continues to demonstrate relevance at the cutting edge of food research.