Fresh fruit is an important part of the diet of people all over the world as a significant source of water, vitamins and natural sugars. Nowadays it is also one of the main sources of dietary fibre. In fruit the dietary fibre is simply cell wall consisting essentially of polysaccharides. The aim of present study was to predict the contents of pectins, cellulose and hemicelluloses by partial least squares regression (PLS) analysis on the basis of Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectra of fruit cell wall residue. The second purpose was to analyse the composition of dietary fibre from fruit based on FT-IR spectral information in combination with chemometric methods (principle components analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA)). Additionally the contents of polysaccharides in studied fruits were determined by analytical methods. It has been shown that the analysis of infrared spectra and the use of multivariate statistical methods can be useful for studying the composition of dietary fibre.
Keywords: Chemometrics; Dietary fibre; HCA; PCA; PLS.
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