Highly automated and fast determination of raffinose family oligosaccharides in Lupinus seeds using pressurized liquid extraction and high-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection

BACKGROUND: Taking into account several requirements for the determination of raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) from Lupinus seeds - e.g., conducting plant breeding projects or food product development - a reasonable combination of efficient automated sample preparation and reliable analysis need to be developed and validated. RESULTS: In this regard pressurized liquid extraction was applied to extract: the RFOs from ground and defatted lupin flour. Compared to many other publications, no further pretreatment, such as protein precipitation, was necessary to obtain satisfactory results applying ion chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection. The oligosaccharide content for the examined Lupinus albus samples were in the range 5.19-9.25 g kg(-1) and for Lupinus angustifolius RFOs 3.49-4.75g kg(-1). Stachyose has always been the main component followed by raffinose and verbascose. CONCLUSION: The developed sample preparation and analytical method is suited to quantify raffinose, stachyose, verbascose and the disaccharide sucrose and, owing to a high degree of automation for sample preparation and relatively short analysis times by pretty peak separation, particularly high sample numbers can be accomplished. (C) 2008 Society of Chemical Industry.