The Amidothèque (literally, the place where starch is catalogued and preserved) was born from the necessity to organize the large collection of native starch samples gathered through the years at Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolécules Végétales (CERMAV, Grenoble, France). Some samples have been extracted and purified by us whereas others have been kindly provided by colleagues from other laboratories or by companies that produce starch. While microscopy images and X-ray diffraction diagrams have been recorded at CERMAV, complementary X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry data have been provided by INRAE (Nantes, France), and colleagues at Unité de Glycobiologie Structurale et Fonctionnelle (Lille, France) have analyzed the composition of various starches. The information has been organized into a structured database that allows browsing the data related to each starch and searching the base using a multicriteria approach. Only the starches that are considered "public domain" or have been described in publications or for which we had authorization from companies can be accessed from the internet. As the Amidothèque needs to grow, we welcome any sample of native starch that you are willing to send, indicating if the information related to the specimen can be freely made available to the community.


Characterization techniques

Polarized light optical microscopy.

Drops of starch granule slurries have been deposited between cover and slip and observed with a Zeiss Axiophot II microscope equipped with polarized light illumination. A λ plate has been inserted to generate polarization colors. The images have been acquired using a SIS ColorView 12 CCD camera controlled by the SIS Analysis software.

Scanning electron microscopy

Drops of starch granule suspensions have been deposited on copper stubs and coated with Au/Pd. The specimens have been observed with a Jeol JSM-6100 or a Thermo Scientifc Quanta 250 FEG microscope, operating at an accelerating voltage of 2-8 kV, in secondary electron mode.

X-ray diffraction

Starch powder have been equilibrated at 95% relative humidity for several days and poured into glass capillaries that were flame-sealed and X-rayed in vacuum with a Ni-filtered CuKα radiation (λ = 0.1542 nm) with a Philips PW3830 generator operating at 30 kV and 20 mA. The XRD patterns have been recorded on Fujifilm imaging plates, read with a Fujifilm BAS 1800-II bioanalyzer.