ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the knowledge and, as far as is practicable, place it in context with the processes of primary production and product repartitioning in crop species. Integrated local-scale processing of green crops to yield protein, fiber, natural colorings, and specific high-value oils could also yield fructans as a by-product for refining or processing elsewhere. The conventional view of fructans as polymers of fructose ignores their structural and biosynthetic relationship with sucrose. Fructan containing species from a local UK flora did, however, represent a significant proportion of those with high levels of reserve carbohydrate in the perennating organs. The occurrence of frutan in higher plants has been summarized by G. F. Hendry in a valuable series of reviews. Chromatographic separation of many higher plant fructans shows them to be polydisperse polymers containing a range of both sizes and structures. The preceding discussion may give the impression that fructans are a random assemblage of residues accreted onto a parent sucrose molecule.
