Abstract
The objective of this research work was to establish a new rational
method for evaluating the whole gelling property of agar substances. Since
the advent of the new agar from “alkali-treated Gracilaria”
in 1950's, there had been a confusion for qualification when contrasted with
the traditional Gelidium agar. Therefore, any rectified scientific
method for qualification of gelling property of agar had been generally
desired. First, the correlation between the endothermic energy required to
dissociate cross linkage of gel, ΔHº, and the organoleptic
gel-firmness was found. Secondly, the correlation between ΔHº and ΔTm
was also found, whereΔTm is the melting point difference between 1.0
% and 1.5 % gels. Finally, the new “regression line formula of log ΔHº
to log Tm” was established, which extended to the new efficient ΔHº-determination
method, by applying the new conventional ΔTm-measurement. It was
admitted that the ΔHº implies the intrinsic gelling property of agar
and agarose, identically. The ΔHº-range was from 314 to 8158 kJ/mol.
The much significance of ΔHº, and practical applications of the
results are described in Discussion.