Preliminary study of polysaccharides in the tragacanth of Astragalus gossipinus Fisch and Astragalus keyserlingii Bunge

Abstract

From the point of gum production, Fabaceae is one of the most richest plant families. Tragacanth is one of the most important gums and has medicianl, industrial and food applications. The soluble and insoloble fractions are 40 and 60% in white gum and 70 and 30% in yellow gum, respectively. These fractions do not show considerable seasonal variations. Total sugar in white gum and yellow gum are 70% and 90% , respectively; monosaccharides in both kind of tragacanths include galacturonic acid, galactose, glucose, arabinose, xylose, fucose, and rhamnose and the amount of xylose in the composition is higher than that of others. Insoluble fraction of white gum, the amount of xylose is more than that of arabinose pJus fucose while in yellow gum its amount is lower than that of arabinose plus fucose. fln insoluble fraction of both kind of tragacanths, the amount of arabinose plus fucose is high. The quality of white gum, in comparison to yellow gum, is better due to the higher in soluble fraction and arabinose plus fucose to xylose in this fraction . The gum tragacartti of both species has a xylan backbone.