Large-scale production and characterisation of wheat bran arabinoxylooligosaccharides

Arabinoxylooligosaccharides (AXOS) were enzymically produced on a large scale from commercial wheat bran. This implied enzyme-based removal of starch and proteins to yield an arabinoxylan (AX) enriched destarched, deproteinised wheat bran fraction, and further incubation of the latter with a Bacillus subtilis endoxylanase converting AX into AXOS. The recovered wheat bran AXOS had a purity of 72% and an average degree of polymerisation and degree of substitution of 15 and 0.27, respectively. Fractional precipitation with ethanol was effective in separating the wheat bran AXOS into fractions with different structure. At a given ethanol concentration, the degree of substitution, degree of polymerisation and substitution pattern of wheat bran AXOS all influenced their precipitation behaviour. (c) 2006 Society of Chemical Industry