Sugar profiles of the pods of cultivated and wild types of carob bean (Ceratonia siliqua L.) in Turkey

The aim of the study was to determine the main sugar profiles of the pods, without the seeds, of cultivated and wild types of the carob bean grown in the Mediterranean and Aegean basin of Turkey. The most abundant sugar in the pods was sucrose with smaller amounts of glucose and fructose. The pods of cultivated varieties had a higher (p < 0.05) total sugar concentration of 531 +/- 93 g/kg dry weight than the wild type selections which had 437 +/- 77 g/kg. However, this difference was due to the greater concentration of sucrose in the cultivated varieties which did not differ from the wild types in their concentrations of fructose or glucose. The ratios of individual sugars to total sugars in the pods were similar in both varieties. There is a need to identify extreme wild types, including high seeds and low pod, and cultivated types, containing low seeds and high pod, rich in sugar for an exhaustive picture of the sugar profiles of the varieties. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.