Dietary fibre in cocoa shell: characterisation of component polysaccharides

Polysaccharides were isolated from cocoa shells and characterised by compositional and linkage analysis. The polysaccharide types were diverse and included pectic polysaccharides (similar to45%) which were made up of a heterogeneous mixture of rhamnogalacturonans with variable degrees of branching. Hemicelluloses (similar to20%) consisted of a mixture of a fucosylated xyloglucan, galactoglucomannans, and glucuronoarabinoxylan. Cellulose accounted for similar to35% of the cell wall polysaccharides. The total dietary fibre content was approximately 40%, not as high as previous reports. This was attributed to the fact that previous studies have included a Klason Lignin fraction in estimates of fibre. A solid state NMR study of the cocoa shell Klason Lignin fraction provided evidence that it contained little if any lignin and presumably consisted principally of protein-Maillard-tannin complexes. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.