Manufactured Products

Glucose and Starch FAQs'

2.2.1.5 (FAQ's) Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Corn?
• What is starch?
• What is Glucose Syrup?
• What is the difference between Glucose and Common Sugar (Sucrose)?
• How is Glucose Syrup Produced?
• What is Dextrose Equivalent (D.E.)?
• What are the Properties of Glucose Syrup?

What is Corn?

Corn is a Cereal more commonly known as Maize with the following typical composition

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What is Starch ?

This is one of nature's most abundant raw materials. Maize and Wheat are efficient producers. Starch exhibits considerable differences in properties due to the presence of straight chain (Amylose) and branched chain (Amylopectin) molecules in varying proportions.
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What is Glucose Syrup?

Glucose syrup is purified aqueous solution of nutritive saccharides (sugars) obtained from starch.

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What is the difference between Glucose and Common Sugar (Sucrose)?

The main difference between Glucose syrup and sugar (Sucrose) used in the confectionary industry is that Glucose Syrup not only contributes sweetness, but has a major influence on the physical properties, manufacture and shelf life of confectionery products. A specific Glucose syrup (42DE) mixed with Sugar is used to make hard glass sweets. Sugar alone would give an opaque color where the sugar has crystallized giving a grainy texture.

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How is Glucose Syrup Produced?

Glucose Syrup is natural product and is produced commercially in our factory at Al-Kharj, in the same way as the human body breaks down starch in the human digestive system, namely by acids and enzymes

1. If you completely hydrolyze (break down) Starch, you will end up with individual single Glucose units (Dextrose)
2. If you do a medium hydrolysis (break down) starch (say approximately 50%) you will end up with mixture of sugars including Glucose (1 unit sugar) + Maltose (2 unit sugar) + Maltotriose (3 unit sugar) and Maltodextrins (high sugars with large number of units joined together).
3. If you partially break down the starch or lower the conversion, you will end up with low levels of Glucose, low level of Maltose, low levels of maltotriose and high level of maltodextins.
It is the high levels of maltodextrins that give high viscosity (thickening) or texture which is required in confectionary products.
You can therefore see how the properties of Glucose can change depending on the degree of break down of the starch.

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What is Dextrose Equivalent (D.E.)?

Glucose syrups are characterized according to the Dextrose Equivalent (D.E.). This is a measure of the amount of reducing sugars present. For simplification if you take pure Glucose ( Dextrose) as having a D.E. of 100 (where the starch have been completely hydrolyzed ( broken down) to its basic Glucose monomer unit) then medium conversion syrup has a D.E. of 55-65 and low conversion a D.E. of 30-44 (the measurement of D.E. is made by the LANE and EYNON titration method)

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What are the Properties of Glucose Syrup?

Table 1 outlines the properties of Glucose syrup in a simplified manner. The table also shows how the property increases or decreases will change in D.E.