Many starches from different crops and cultivars are used in processed foods. Their properties, especially thermal properties, are most important to control gelatinization and retrogradation behavior in food processing, because thermal properties have a remarkable influence on physical properties. Various chemically and physically modified starches have thus been developed to improve starch properties. In addition, many non starchy substances such as salts, 1 6) sugars, 1,6 7) alcohols, 8,9) surfactants, 6,10) organic acids, 9) fatty acid 11) and amino acids,have often been used to modify starch properties. However, many consumers have recently avoided chemically modified starches due to potential fears over their safety. On the other hand, physical modification is limited in such processing technology as heat moisture treatment 15,16) and high pressurization, 17) because it is not so easy to massproduce improved starch with constant quality, resulting in limited application of modified starches. The improvement by adding modifiers is also insufficient, because few materials are available for food use. With the recent remarkable increase in processed starchy foods, including frozen foods and fried foods, the control of gelatinization and retrogradation behaviors is again becoming a great problem to be solved.It has been recently reported that the thermal properties of starch could be effectively improved by conjugating with amino acids by cross linking with water soluble carbodiimide 18) or the Maillard reaction. 19 21) The conjugation with amino acid is a new concept for providing valuable modified starch, cross linking agents are not accepted for food use. Since the Maillard reaction between starch and amino acid, 19) or peptide 20,21) generally requires a long period, such as seven days or more to conjugate, and has low productivity, it is essential to improve the reaction time and productivity. Recently, it has been reported that free amino acids have a characteristic influence on the gelatinization behavior of starch in terms of increased gelatinization temperature, and reduced swelling and viscosity, depending on their net charge, 12,13) and that such a unique effect of free amino acids on the gelatinization behavior of starch was caused by the degree of binding ability of the amino acid to the starch chains.22) These results strongly suggest that not only conjugation with amino acid through the improved Maillard reaction but also co existence of a suitable free amino acid would be greatly effective to control gelatinization behavior. In addition, since gelatinization behavior affects the texture of the resulting starch paste depending on the inflow degree of water, the state of water in the starch paste would also be affected in terms of the vaporizability and mobility of water, and is related to the dry texture of starch foods after processing, such as frying or re heating in a microwave. Therefore, in the present study, the Maillard reaction of starch with amino acids was performed at a high temperature...