Hydrolyze the starch enzymatically (eg. by addition od amylase), then quantify glucose. For example:

http://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v1/ … 6.232.html

I don’t think that would work very well because that would measure the total amount of glucose monomers. If one starch chain is longer than the other, it will have a higher reading even though it will have the same number of moles of starch.

It would give you a good approximation of the number of glucose units. For most quantitative research, most people are looking for the potential number of glucoses that could be unleashed. As far as I know, given enough resources and space, a starch will grow and grow and grow to a maximum size that is actually visible. In the paper that was listed above, the author actually concludes that because the starch is entirely glucose and knowing the molecular weight of one full starch granule and knowing the number of glucose you can extrapolate the number of starch there are in a sample. There is no better way that I can think of.

Why .pdf attachements are not allowed on this forum is odd? Any ideas why that is disabled?