ABSTRACT
Sugar beet fiber is primarily derived from the sugar beet industry, where it is obtained from the co-product after extraction of sucrose. Dietary fiber in the sugar beet comes exclusively from its cell walls and is devoid of resistant starch or other reserve polysaccharides. Sugar beet fiber also contains approximatively 200 mg/g of glucose, mainly of cellulosic origin; in total, sugars add up to about 80% of the dry weight, with remarkably low amounts of xylose and mannose, again also in comparison with other dicotyledons. Sugar beets are mainly composed of parenchymal tissue with thin, supple and hydrophilic cell walls. Acid-extracted sugar beet pectins can thus be characterized by a low neutral sugar content and conversely high galacturonic acid. Beet cell walls have very low concentrations of the sugars that denote hemicelluloses, i.e., xylose, mannose, noncellulosic glucose, and fucose, and their hemicelluloses have been very little studied.
