Abstract An instrumental method based on a chemometric model of the medium region of the infrared (MIR) was developed to analyse total sugar content and the proportions of glucose, fructose and sucrose. In order to construct the model, a set of 127 standard aqueous solutions of different sugars in the concentration range 0–20% (w/v) were prepared and analysed in the interval 4900–700 cm −1 . The MIR was transformed by normalisation, correction of baseline using the second derivative, and suppression of the signals of water and carbon dioxide. The region between 1150 and 950 cm −1 showed the highest correlation between signal and concentration. The correlation coefficient for total sugar content was 0.956, whilst those for glucose, fructose and sucrose were 0.982, 0.972 and 0.992, respectively. The method was validated using a set of 28 samples of nectar which had been assayed by chromatographic and refractometric methods. The method shows potential utility for the prediction of nectar sugar components. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.