2001 AACC Annual Meeting Charlotte, North Carolina October 14-18, 2001 Charlotte Convention Center

In food science, it is often very useful to use analytical methods such as FT-Raman spectroscopy that allow fast and nondestructive determination of the degree of chemical modification of starches. We present several examples of using FT-Raman spectroscopy to obtain the level of chemical modification in different starch samples including those from a wide variety of botanical sources like wheat, rice and maize. Raman calibration curves have been developed for the determination of the degree of chemical modification for succinylation, octinylsuccinylation, benzylation, acetylation and other common chemical modifications. The Raman calibration curves exhibit excellent linearity with the amount of modification and are useful for analytical applications. We have found the FT-Raman spectroscopic method enables quick and nondestructive determination of the amount of chemical modification that needs very little sample preparation.