Dear Selwal,

When you spot samples on the chromatographic paper do it with a capillary tube and concentrate it as much as possible with successive drying of the spot you kept. You must make sure the spot you kept must be concentrated and dry enough then you may be able to witness unsmudged dispersion. Also you must make sure the run of the PC undisturbed and kept on a flat surface.

 Has the same technique worked for you in the past?  It could be that your samples are simply too concentrated, and there was too much carbohydrate to properly separate. Also, as Suraji suggests, perhaps they were not dried completely. We stopped doing paper chromatography many years ago, as thin-layer chromatography has many advantages, including the fact that it is much quicker. Is there any particular reason why you have to do paper chrom., or have you tried TLC? There are many TLC methods for separation of malto-oligosaccharides.

Hey Greg, I just wanted to see whether my expressed amylase enzyme could produce malto-oligosaccharide products. I never used TLC or PC before and I am using it for first time. I thought it is easier and no need to make TLC plates.  Hi Suraji, I think I have dried well all the sample before make contact to solvent.  

Dear Greg and Selwal,

Paper chromatography can be used at basic levels and since Selwal is doing it for the first time it will give him some experience in doing TLC. For our laboratory classes we do PC to identify colouring material in food products and our results are satisfactory. With suitable mobile phase I'm sure that you can get better results.