Simultaneous Content Determination of Mono-, Di-, and Fructo-oligosaccharides in Citrus Fruit Juices Using an FTIR-PLS Method Based on Selected Absorption Bands

A quantification method was developed to determine the sugar components, either following addition or enzymatic treatment, in citrus fruit juices containing additional fructo-oligosaccharides using midinfrared spectroscopy. For the quantification, we compared the results obtained by applying the simultaneous equation method, which uses very little wavenumber information, and the partial least squares (PLS) regression method, which requires a lot of wavenumber information. In order to prevent overfitting in the PLS method, we concentrated on reducing the amount of spectral data used in the analysis. The corresponding FTIR-PLS method led to an accurate quantification of the sugar contents, even in enzymatically treated orange juices with complicated compositions. The spectral data used for model calibration were significantly reduced by focusing on the absorption and assignment information of the sugar components. The RMSEs of Glc, Fru, Suc, GF2, and GF3 in enzyme-treated orange juice before and after spectral data reduction were 0.50, 0.46, 0.61, 0.74, and 0.61 g/L and 0.51, 0.49, 0.73, 0.86, and 0.61 g/L, respectively. The developed method could be easily implemented for practical applications, using a simple measuring instrument since only absorption information at the limited absorption bands is required.