In the course of searching immunodulators from natural herbal sources,the polysaccharide has been isolated from the water extract of duckweed(Herba Spirodelae seu Lemnae).The authors aim at investigating the methods that determine the content of total saccharides in the mixture,accordingly,to be used as a quality control in the procedure of producing polysaccharides from duckweed.The contents of saccharides in the extraction were mensurated by spertrophotometry of sulphuric acid-phenol and sulphuric acid-anthrone.And the validitiy of methods was evaluated through some indexes such as linearity and range,precision,stability,and accuracy.The results reveal the methods are convenient,rapid,accurate,and high sensitive,thereby leading to a wide and effective use in determining the saccharides contents in polysaccharides extraction from Herba Spirodelae seu Lemnae.