Characteristics of dietary fiber in persimmon leaves wereinvestigated by using analytochemical and histochemical techniques.The staining examination with the various labeled lectins for freshpersimmon leaves showed high affinity for the specific sugarresidues or sugar chains in hemicellulose, pectic substance andglycoprotein constituting the cell wall of leaves. The sugarcomposition analysis and histochemical observation showed that theinsoluble hemicellulose fraction may be hetero-polysaccharideconsisted of arabinose as main sugar chain, and xylose andgalactose as side chain. The results also revealed that the solublehemicellulose fraction may be categorized to acidichetro-polysaccharide composed of galacturonan as main sugar chainand mannose and arabinose as side chain. The two fractions ofsoluble acidicpolysaccharide with different uronic acid contentswere found to belong to pectic substances. The present resultsmay
indicate that some significant informations were presented on theproperties of hemicellulose and pectic substance referring tomatrix structure of cell wall in persimmon leaves.

Key words: persimmon leaves, dietary fiber, acidic polysaccharides,histochemical observation, lectin, pectic substance.