Spectrophotometric estimation of total polysaccharides in Cassia tora gum

Seed galactomannans commonly known as seed gums, are important food hydrocolloids used all over the world in different industries. They exhibit excellent binding, suspending,emulsifying, thickening, stabilizing and water-holding properties and could be utilized for the preparation of pharmaceutical dosage forms like tablets, syrups, suspensions, lotions, ointments and for sustained drug release systems. The present paper deals with the spectrophotometric estimation of total polysaccharide content of the gum obtained from Cassia tora seeds collected from Jalgaon region (Maharashtra). The gum was isolated by precipitation method & evaluated for total polysaccharide content using Phenol – sulphuric acid method. The total polysaccharide content in Cassia tora gum was found to be 77 %w/w.