Determination of oligosaccharides by conventional high-resolution gas chromatography

This paper describes a simple gas chromatographic method for the analysis of (higher) oligosaccharides without needing a high-temperature procedure. The newly developed method used an ordinary capillary column and a temperature program with 360°C as the maximum temperature. Sample preparation consisted of the oxymation and silyation of the sugars. Oligosaccharides with degrees of polymerisation of up to 7 could be determined with good repeatability (variation coefficient < 7.5%), reproducibility (variation coefficient < 11.8%) and accuracy (mean recovery 103.9%).Analysis of oligosaccharide-enriched food products demonstrated that this cheap and easy procedure could be a valuable and reliable tool for the quantitative determination of oligosaccharides in foodstuffs.This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (fellowship SB2003-0045, projects AGL2004-05031/ALI and AGL 2004-07227-CO2-02) and by the European Union (ERG-FP6-505596).Peer Reviewe