Cereal Chem 45:539 - 549.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
Comparison of Chemical Composition and Properties Between Hard Red Spring and Durum Wheat Endosperm Pentosans.

D. G. Medcalf, B. L. D'Appolonia, and K. A. Gilles. Copyright 1968 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Pentosans (arabinoxylans) from the water-soluble and water-insoluble (sludge) portions of endosperm of durum and hard red spring wheat (HRS) were compared under two different isolation procedures. The first method used acetylation and fractional precipitation of a low-protein pentosan preparation. In the second method, pentosan preparations treated with alpha-amylase were fractionated by DEAE-cellulose column chromatography. The relative proportion of the component sugars in each fraction was determined after acid hydrolysis by gas chromatography. In all cases, durum pentosans contained a higher proportion of arabinose, indicating a more highly branched structure. Pentosans from the water-soluble portion of the endosperm were generally similar in degree of branching to the corresponding "sludge" pentosans. Durum pentosans isolated by the acetylation procedure were somewhat higher in molecular weight than the corresponding HRS pentosans. With the DEAE-cellulose isolation procedure, the HRS pentosans appeared to be of higher molecular weight than the durum pentosans.