Separation and Characterization of Five Kinds of Medicinal Starches by Gravitational Field-Flow Fractionation (GrFFF) / 中国药学杂志

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To study the large/small granule number ratio, granule morphology, crystal structure, amylopectin and amylose ratio of five kinds of medicinal starches. METHODS: Five kinds of medicinal starches were separated and characterized by self-assembled gravitational field-flow fractionation (GrFFF) instrument and the proportion of large and small starch granules was calculated according to the results. Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy were applied to characterize the morphological property of starch. FT-IR and X-ray diffraction were used to obtain the starch crystalline structure and crystallinity. The contents of amylose and amylopectin were determinate by double wavelength method. RESULTS: The large/small granule number ratios of the five kinds of medicinal starches had obvious difference. The size difference was obvious and the shape was different. The change trends of the order and the amorphous structure of different kinds of starches were the same as that of its relative crystallinity; the higher the amylopectin content, the lower the amylopectin/amylopectin was, the better the crystallinity was. CONCLUSION: GrFFF can be used to characterize and separate large and small starch granules, and the results are in agreement with that of other methods.