Sugar composition of depectinized apple juices

Abstract

Apple juice, the second in the world consumption ranking, has glucose, fructose and sucrose as the main sugar components in fairly known proportion. Intentional adulteration maintaining such feature is possible by addition of high fructose syrup or inverted sugar and this attitude reflects losses from both economical and healthy aspects. The sugar profile in apple juices, although depending of the maturation degree, feature of cultivar and effect from growing places, may give some information in what concerns their authenticity. This article deals with the sugar composition of authentic depectinized apple juice made with selected samples 26 cultivars harvested in different growing places from 1994 to 2006. Total reducing sugar average content was 14.19±1.18 g.100mL-1, comprehending glucose (1.86±0.66 g.100mL-1, fructose (6.69±1.51 g.100mL-1) and sucrose (3,06±1,39 g.100mL-1). The relationship between the sugar concentration found was glucose: fructose: sucrose:: 1: 3,51: 1,64 what is in perfect agreement with the specialized literature. Sugar composition depends of the cultivars but the effects of growing places were not statistical significant in Brazilian geographical context.