Abstract: In this paper, we investigated the effect of microwave extraction on structural characteristics and morphology of polysaccharides from carrot. Boiling water bath and microwave were used to extract carrot polysaccharide (the resulting products were denoted as WEP and MEP respectively). A comparative evaluation was made of the basic physical and chemical properties of the two polysaccharides. High size exclusion chromatography (HPSEC), monosaccharide composition analysis, and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were also used for the preliminary characterization of their morphology. The results showed that the contents of neutral sugar, uronic acid and total phenol were different in WEP and MEP. They were both composed of galacturonic acid, galactose, glucose, arabinose, and rhamnose, but the total sugar content of MEP was higher and contained more constituent monosaccharides of pectin. The HPSEC chromatogramsss of WEP and MEP had some similarity, but WEP exclusively contained a component with a relative molecular weight of up to 7.77 × 105 D. WEP displayed a more aggregated sheet structure, and its components were more dispersed and mainly present as small fragments. According to the results above, the polysaccharides obtained from two different extraction methods had significant differences.

Key words: carrot (Daucus carota L.), polysaccharide, microwave extraction, structural characteristics, morphology