Re: What can I use to measure the sugar level in the sap of pine trees?

Hi,

In answering this question, I suppose that you have got the sap from pine 
trees.

By using chromatography, you can quickly classify the different kinds of 
sugar in the sap solution. Then there are two methods (to my knowledge, 
there should more of them) can be used to measure the concentration of every 
sugar. The first one is enzyme assay. To do this you need specific enzymes 
that digest sugar perform the digestion, and by comparing the difference of 
enzyme before/after digestion, you can calculate the concentration of sugar. 
The second one is quite equipment-dependent: using high performance liquid 
chromatography (HPLC). This method will be very correct, though.


Reference about HPLC:  http://kerouac.pharm.uky.edu/ASRG/HPLC/hplcmytry.html