Cereal Chem 42:485 - 493.  |  VIEW ARTICLE

Reactions of Oligosaccharides. I. Ferricyanide Numbers.

J. D. Commerford and B. L. Scallet. Copyright 1965 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

The ferricyanide number of a carbohydrate (the number of ml. of 0.1000N ferricyanide reacting with 1 g. of substance) is used in determining the reducing power of starches, dextrins, and syrups. The Schoch and Jensen procedure for determining the ferricyanide number was applied to glucose and to a series of glucose polymers prepared by macro paper chromatography and ranging in size from 2 to 10 glucose units. When the results were calculated in terms of equivalents of ferricyanide reagent consumed per equivalent of reducing sugar, a constant stoichiometry was observed for the members of the series higher than maltotriose. G1 to G3 had lower but progressively increasing molecular reducing power. Changing the base employed in the ferricyanide reagent altered the stoichiometry. Use of a saturated calcium hydroxide reagent gave a reaction stoichiometry that was relatively constant for glucose and for all of the glucose polymers. Variation of sugar concentration during the determination had little effect on the results when sodium carbonate was the alkali used, but was important when barium or calcium hydroxide was used.