GC analysis of mono- and disaccharides in milk

What is it about?

Saccharides are functional constituents of milk. Although D-lactose represents almost the totality of the saccharides in the milk, also minor species, like D-glucose, D-galactose, myo-inositol and, as a result of the severe thermal treatments, monosaccharides like D-tagatose, are detectable. Albeit chromatography has been the main analytical approach used for accomplishing this task, quite surprisingly a validated gas-chromatographic method aimed to the simultaneous determination of these compounds is still not present in literature. Hence, our contribution is devoted to fill this gap. After the optimization of clean-up and derivatization steps, the adoption of a recent stationary phase permitted to obtain high resolution and a fast chromatographic run. Validation was accomplished in terms of limit of detection, limit of quantification, linearity, precision and trueness. The accuracy of the method was successfully tested on a number of partially skimmed milk samples. Excellent limits of detection for all analytes make this method eligible, also with respect of a gas-chromatographic/mass spectrometry approach, for routine analysis and quality control in the dairy industries.

Featured Image