Fructans are important vacuolar reserve carbohydrates with drought, cold, ROS and general abiotic stress mediating properties. They occur in 15% of all flowering plants and are believed to display health benefits as a prebiotic and dietary fiber. Fructans are synthesized by specific fructosyltransferases and classified based on the linkage type between fructosyl units. Inulins, one of these fru...

In the present paper, we summarise the data supporting the following hypothesis: dietary inulin-type fructans extracted from chicory root may modulate the production of peptides, such as incretins, by endocrine cells present in the intestinal mucosa, this phenomenon being involved in the regulation of food intake and/or systemic effects. To test this hypothesis, male Wistar rats received for 3 ...

The artichoke (Cynara cardunculus subsp. scolymus) is an intriguing source of indigestible sugar polymers such as inulin-type fructans. Artichoke represents important component a traditional Mediterranean diet and its edible parts are good many high added value compounds inulin, polymer showing relevant prebiotic properties. Compared to the cultivated varieties, wild cardoon (C. var. sylvestris...

The water soluble carbohydrates (WSC) glucose, fructose, and sucrose are well-known to the great public, but fructans represent another type of WSC that deserves more attention given their prebiotic and immunomodulatory properties in the food context. Although the occurrence of inulin-type fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) was proposed in the fruit of some banana accessions, little or no informatio...

Greens-type annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) is susceptible to winter stresses including subfreezing temperatures and pink snow mold (SM). To better understand the mechanisms of SM resistance in annual bluegrass, four SM-resistant and four SM-sensitive genotypes were incubated at low temperature with Microdochium nivale (Fries) Samuels & Hallett, the causal agent of pink snow mold. We assessed t...

Inulin-type fructans are the most studied prebiotic compounds because of their broad range of health benefits. In particular, plants of the Agave genus are rich in fructans. Agave-derived fructans have a branched structure with both β-(2→1) and β-(2→6) linked fructosyl chains attached to the sucrose start unit with a degree of polymerization (DP) of up to 80 fructose units. The objective of thi...

Onion bulbs accumulate fructans, a type of soluble carbohydrate associated with lower rates of colorectal cancers. Higher fructan concentrations in bulbs are correlated with higher pungency, longer dormancy, and greater onion-induced antiplatelet activity (OIAA). We analyzed replicated field trials of a segregating family for types and concentrations of soluble carbohydrates in onion bulbs 90 d...

About 80% of onion bulb dry matter is non-structural carbohydrates (Darbyshire & Henry, 1981). These carbohydrates are predominantly glucose, fructose, sucrose and low-molecular-weight fructans, while starch and raffinose are absent (Darbyshire & Henry, 1981; Benkeblia et al., 2002). The metabolism of sugars is closely linked to the dormancy and sprouting state (Kato, 1966), and the most import...

Plants rely on “reserve” (stored) carbon (C) for growth and survival when newly synthesized C becomes limited. Besides a classic yet recalcitrant C reserve starch, fructans, a class of sucrosederived soluble fructosyl-oligosaccharides, represent a major store of C in many temperate plant species including the economically important Asteraceae and Poaceae families (Hendry, 1993). Dicots typicall...