From the second to the fifth peack, the chromatographic fractions show that the chains shortened, reaching dimensions of dimers, which are identified by the ratio (TS.RS−1) in Table 1 and by paper chromatography (Table 2).
It had been shown by Sokhey and Hanna (1993) and Sokhey and Chinnaswamy (1993) that in corn starch irradiation, even though both the branched amylopectin and the lineal amylose molecules resulted fragmented, the effect was greater in the amylopectin with respect to the amylose. In addition, in studies on irradiated cassava, waxy maize and wheat starch, the reducing sugar content increased with the irradiation dose (Raffi et al., 1981; Ananthaswamy et al., 1970).