Fast microwave-assisted free sugars washing and hydrolysis pre-treatment for the flow injection determination of starch in food

The approach used consists of a flow injection (FI) manifold assisted by a focused microwave digestor for both fast washing of free sugars and acceleration of the hydrolysis step prior to the determination of starch in food. The action of microwaves reduces both the times for removal of free sugars to a 5 min single washing cycle with ethanol/water and that of the subsequent starch hydrolysis to a 10 min step. The sugars formed in the starch hydrolysis are in-line derivatised and photometrically monitored at λ=460 nm. In this way, automation of pre-treatment and determination is achieved with the minimum of both cost and time. The precision of the overall method, expressed as relative standard deviation, is 3.75% and the total analysis time is 38 min. Comparison of the results, obtained in applying the method to flour and bread, is in agreement with those provided by the manual method.