Commercial cellulase complexes produced by cellulolytic fungi contain enzyme activities that are capable of hydrolyzing non-cellulosic polysaccharides in biomass, primarily hemicellulose and pectins, in addition to cellulose. However, xylanase activities detected in most commercial enzyme preparations have been shown to be insufficient to completely hydrolyze xylan, resulting in high xylooligomer concentrations remaining in the hydrolysis broth. Our recent research showed that these xylooligomers are stronger inhibitors of cellulase activity than others have previously established for glucose and cellobiose, making their removal of great importance. In this study, a HPLC system that can measure xylooligomers with degrees of polymerization (DP) up to 30 was applied to assess how Spezyme CP cellulase, Novozyme 188 beta-glucosidase, Multifect xylanase, and non-commercial beta-xylosidase enzymes hydrolyze different chain length xylooligomers derived from birchwood xylan. Spezyme CP cellulase and Multifect xylanase partially hydrolyzed high DP xylooligomers to lower DP species and monomeric xylose, while beta-xylosidase showed the strongest ability to degrade both high and low DP xylooligomers. However, about 10-30% of the higher DP xylooligomers were difficult to be breakdown by cellulase or xylanase and about 5% of low DP xylooligomers (mainly xylobiose) proved resistant to hydrolysis by cellulase or beta-glucosidase, possibly due to low beta-xylosidase activity in these enzymes and/or the precipitation of high DP xylooligomers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.