Evaluation of the buri palm (Corypha elata Roxb.) sugar properties

Abstract

Most people want to live a long and healthy life, so they focus more on health and wellness thus, producing a low glycemic index (GI) foods are now in demand. The work presented here is concerned with the evaluation of sugar from Palm tree such as Buri Palm (Corypha elata Roxb.) which has a big potential to be used as healthy alternative sugar. Based on the findings of Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI 2007), Buri palm sugar from Verde Island, Batangas has a medium GI but still its other properties are not yet explored. Evaluation of sugar profile was done thru High Performance Liquid Chromatogra(HPLC) and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrophotometry (GCMS). The sugar properties of Buri Palm sugar were also compared with brown sugar and coco sugar. The results showed that Buri palm sugar had neutral to basic pH and showed variances in color properties. It can be noted that brown sugar has the highest sucrose content of 92.35 ug/100mg followed by coco sugar with 84.94 ug/100mg, while Buri palm sugar had the lowest sucrose content of 82.50 ug/100mg. For glucose content, brown sugar has the lowest content of 1.32 ug/100mg, while the coconut sap sugar has the highest with 2.61 ug/100mg , almost doubled that of brown sugar. Buri palm sugar has 2.01 ug/100mg glucose content which is in between that of brown and coconut sap sugar. It can be inferred that Buri palm sugar contains mostly of sucrose with a minimal content of glucose and fructose and is comparable to that of the coconut sap sugar. Buri palm sugar contains minerals which are essential to health and is comparable to that of the mineral contents of coconut sap sugar (PCA 2015) with emphasis to sodium, iron and zinc. Furthermore, no heavy metals are present on Buri palm sugar. This research can be used as baseline for further processing and value adding of the Buri palm sugar.