The International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis (ICUMSA) is an international standards body, founded in 1897, that publishes detailed laboratory procedures for the analysis of

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...

. The ICUMSA Methods Book contains detailed instructions for analyzing raw, cane, white, beet,

molasses Molasses () is a viscous substance resulting from refining sugarcane or sugar beets into sugar. Molasses varies in the amount of sugar, method of extraction and age of the plant. Sugarcane molasses is primarily used to sweeten and flavour foods ...

, plantation white and specialty sugars. Among these are methods for determination of dry solids content by polarimetry, densimetry and

refractometry Refractometry is the analytical method of measuring substances' refractive index (one of their fundamental physical properties) in order to, for example, assess their composition or purity. A refractometer is the instrument used to measure refracti ...

, color ( extinction coefficient at 420 nm), reducing sugars, and the presence of metals such as

arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, but ...

and

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

. The Methods Book also contains polynomials and tables (derived from the polynomials) which relate the refractive index of solutions of pure

sucrose Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula . For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refined ...

glucose Glucose is a simple sugar with the molecular formula . Glucose is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. Glucose is mainly made by plants and most algae during photosynthesis from water and carbon dioxide, using ...

fructose Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a Ketose, ketonic monosaccharide, simple sugar found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galacto ...

and

invert sugar Inverted sugar syrup, also called invert syrup, invert sugar, simple syrup, sugar syrup, sugar water, bar syrup, syrup USP, or sucrose inversion, is a syrup mixture of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose, that is made by hydrolytic sacch ...

to the strength of those solutions. These are to be used with the analysis methods that characterize sugars by refractometric means but find wide application outside the

sugar industry The sugar industry subsumes the production, processing and marketing of sugars (mostly sucrose and fructose). Globally, most sugar is extracted from sugar cane (~80% predominantly in the tropics) and sugar beet (~ 20%, mostly in temperate cli ...

as the sucrose polynomial is built into the firmware of modern refractometers and is the basis for calibration of purely optical refractometers which read in

Brix Degrees Brix (symbol °Bx) is a measure of the dissolved solids in a liquid, and is commonly used to measure dissolved sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength ...

. Temperature correction factors, also derived from the polynomials, are the basis for the Automatic Temperature Compensation features found in those instruments. Thus, a vintner measuring the Brix of juice from his grapes by means of a refractometer accepts a sugar content reading based on the refractive properties of sucrose despite the fact that the primary sugar in grape juice is fructose, not sucrose. This usually does not result in significant error. The ICUMSA is constituted of representatives from national committees designated by the governments of major sugar importing and exporting countries; the votes of these representatives are weighted according to the amount of sugar their countries import and export.ICUMSA Constitution
retrieved 2010-02-07.

References

External links

ICUMSA web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:International Commission For Uniform Methods Of Sugar Analysis Sugar organizations Standards organisations in Germany