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Determination of the Sugar Content in Commercial Plant Milks by Near Infrared Spectroscopy and Luff-Schoorl Total Glucose Titration

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Abstract

Thirty-nine samples of plant milks (rice, soy, oat, barley, spelt, quinoa, almond, and a variety of wheat called kamut) were analyzed for their reducing sugars content by NIR spectroscopy, using the Luff-Schoorl official method as reference to build the calibration models. The amount of reducing sugars, expressed as grams of glucose/100 mL of beverage, ranged from 0.5 g/100 mL (soy) to 7.6 g/100 mL (rice). Both partial least squares (PLS) and interval-partial least squares regression (iPLS) were used to build multivariate calibration models, testing different spectra preprocessing methods. The performance in prediction of the best calibration model was evaluated on an external test set of nine randomly selected samples (RMSEP = 0.98 g/100 mL, R 2 PRED = 0.84), and its statistical significance was assessed using a randomization t test based on Monte Carlo simulations. The results obtained suggest that NIR spectroscopy can be a valid alternative to the laborious reference titrimetric method for the determination of total glucose content in plant milks.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Bruker Italia s.r.l. for the technical support in NIR glucose measurements on all plant milks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Drug Sciences, University of Pavia, Viale Taramelli 12, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Giorgio Marrubini & Adele Papetti

  2. Bruker Italia S.r.l, Viale V. Lancetti 43, 20158, Milan, Italy

    Emiliano Genorini

  3. Department of Life Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, padiglione Besta, via Amendola 2, 42122, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Alessandro Ulrici

Authors
  1. Giorgio Marrubini
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  2. Adele Papetti
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  3. Emiliano Genorini
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  4. Alessandro Ulrici
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Correspondence to Adele Papetti.

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No funding was used for this study.

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Giorgio Marrubini declares that he has no conflict of interest. Adele Papetti declares that she has no conflict of interest. Emiliano Genorini declares that he has no conflict of interest. Alessandro Ulrici declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Marrubini, G., Papetti, A., Genorini, E. et al. Determination of the Sugar Content in Commercial Plant Milks by Near Infrared Spectroscopy and Luff-Schoorl Total Glucose Titration. Food Anal. Methods 10, 1556–1567 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-016-0713-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-016-0713-1

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