CONTRIBUTION OF ENZYMATIC METHOD FOR ANALYZING SUCROSE AND STARCH IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE LIME- AND EARTH-BASED MORTARS

Brown sugar and sticky rice were frequently used as organic additives in Chinese mortars. This study applied enzymatic spectrophotometric methods to identify sucrose and starch contents in traditional Chinese lime- and earth-based mortars. The focus was to understand and evaluate the qualitative detection capacity of enzymatic method in mortars, by first applying the method on a series of lab-prepared mortar specimens with specific amounts of brown sugar and sticky rice addition, then on historic mortar samples suspected to contain brown sugar and sticky rice. The potential contribution and li...