A considerable change in the market of sweetening of foods has been observed and the dominance of sucrose as a major carbohydrate sweetener has been challenged. A wide range of new and more desirable carbohydrate-based sweeteners have emerged on the scene to keep pace with the advances in food technology. These sweeteners have wide applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries. The most important among them is Invert Sugar, an equimolecular mixture of glucose and fructose. Invert sugar is a valuable sweetener in food and pharmaceutical application because of its functionally more desirable properties i.e. high osmotic pressure, high solubility and humid nature.

Some of the important applications of Invert Sugar are :

• Sweet-meat, bread, biscuits, chocolates, condensed milk, jams, jelly etc.
• Syrups in the pharmaceutical industry.
• Beverages including aerated beverages.
• As a substitute for honey.
• Infant foods.
• Intravenous injectables for treatment of certain pathological conditions such as diabetes.
• In paper and tobacco industries. because of its humectancy.

PROCESS

The conventional method of manufacturing Invert Sugar involves acid hydrolysis of sucrose, the popular and cheap sweetener. However, such acid hydrolysis has a low conversion efficiency, high energy consumption and thus cost of production is high. The acid-hydrolysed product also contains impurities introduced by uncontrollable parameters during inversion. The said conversion can also be achieved by enzymatic action of invertase on sucrose with a conversion efficiency of almost 100% without the inherent disadvantages of acid hydrolysis. The key to the process developed is a specific enzyme for the continuous production of concentrated Invert Sugar using immobilised yeast cells in an inorganic insoluble matrix.