Seed gums
Polysaccharides derived from plants and seeds have been in use for thousand of years. Seed gums are a group of polysaccharides with the following properties:
- Seed gums are light to dark cream colored amorphous powder characterized by forming viscous or clear solutions when dispersed or dissolved in cold or hot water.
- They produce low to high viscosity depending upon the source and manufacturing process. They have property of forming high viscosity even at low concentration (4500-8000 cP at 1% w/v) where cP=centipoise, measure scale of viscosity.
- Seed gums are stable over a wide range of pH(3-9). The nonionic nature of the polymer is responsible for almost constant viscosity of the solution.
- They have excellent compatibility characteristic with organic, inorganic substance including certain dyes and various constituents of food.
- They show effective settling (flocculation) properties even at lower concentration.