Determination of glucose content of banana:
Banana is one of the plentiful and cheapest fruit all over the world. It is highly nutritious fruit as it contains many calories and its pulp contains 27% of carbohydrates (Anon, 1976). Diabetic patients are prescribed not to add banana in their diet as it contains high content of free sugars. It is also full of many essential vitamins and minerals including vitamin A, B6, C, riboflavin, niacin, folate, iron, potassium, magnesium and dietary fiber. It provides 110 nutrient-dense calories per serving with the consumption of one medium sized banana which is almost equal to 126 grams. Quality of banana is dependent upon which variety it belongs and treatments which are applied post-harvest to make it storable for longer period of time. Literature which strongly emphasizes loss of banana post-harvest or biochemical changes after application of certain chemicals to increase storage life is limited.
Total sugar content of banana is 23% whether fully ripe or overripe. The ratio of glucose: fructose is almost unity during all stages of ripeness. Sucrose is the prime sugar of ripe banana which is almost 70% of the total sugars in fully ripe banana while glucose is the prime sugar of young banana. During ripening process, dry matters keeps on increasing with age gradually decreasing at ripening stage. Starch content was the one which keeps on increasing from early to full ripened stage, while there was hardly any change in any other sugar