abstract
Honeydew is excreted by aphids as a sweet waste and nectar is floral honey. Honeydew and nectar are
complicated samples which consist of various sugars and amino acids. In this work, a simple ion chromatography
with column-switching method was developed for the simultaneous analysis of 8 monosaccharides
and oligosaccharides in honeydew and nectar. A reversed-phase column was used as a
pretreatment column to eliminate organics on-line and sugars were eluted from a collection loop to analytical
column by using column-switching technique. This method showed good linearity (r P 0.9994)
and afforded low limits of detection ranging from 1.55 to 10.17 lg L1 for all the analytes. Recoveries ranged
from 95% to 105% and repeatability results were acceptable with relative standard deviation of less
than 3.21% (n = 6). This method was successfully applied to quantification of these sugars in honeydew
and nectar. These results showed honeydew had much more oligosaccharides than nectar.