About 70 papers from an international conference in Tsukuba, Japan, in November 1992, discuss the various hydrocolloids that are widely used to control the viscoelasticity, emulsification, gelation, dispersion, thickening, and other textural qualities of food products. They consider the recent devel

Gellan gum, a microbial polysaccharide, consisting of tetra-saccharide unit, glucose, glucuronic acid, glucose and rhamnose, forms a transparent gel which is heat-resistant in the presence of divalent cations. Since 1989, the collaborative research group was organised in the Research Group of Polymer Gels affiliated to the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, consisting of various laboratories with different disciplines to clarify the mechanism using the common purified sample. This special issue contains 19 papers on the molecular conformation, gel-sol transition, interaction of gellan and...