Interpenetrating network formation in agarose–sodium gellan gel composites

Compressive textural attributes, opacity and syneresis of gels prepared from gellan, agar and their mixtures

“…In a gellan-agarose mixed gel, the occurrence of brittle texture was reported by Amici et al (2001) particularly when gellan content was increased beyond 2%. Agarose is unable to make its full mechanical contribution to this gellan-dominated system.…”

“…The other possibility included the collapse of the gel into a compact sheet; this phenomenon was observed mostly in gellan and gellan-agar gels. Amici et al (2001) indicated that for a mixed gel consisting of sodium gellan and agarose at concentrations more than 2% and 0.5%, respectively, the former acted as the first gelling species. The composite modulus of this combined gel fell below that for agarose alone.…”

“…A dense network structure having thick strands was expected to happen (Yamamoto and Cunha, 2007); these gels were expected to be tougher having turbid/opaque appearance. Amici et al (2001), based on the observation in a transmission electron microscope (TEM), concluded that gellan gel shows a denser network structure with smaller pores and significantly thinner fibre strands.…”

“…All these studies indicate the possibility of developing specialty products using another hydrocolloid along with gellan gum. Amici et al (2001) have indicated that gellan gum is a good candidate for study in a mixture with agarose as it forms a strong homogenous gel at low concentrations. Textural attributes of mixed gel containing gellan gum and agar are scare though there is a scope to study such mixed systems with an overall intention of developing texturized food gels containing fruit juices, pulp, pieces of fruits and vegetables, and possibly other nutritional ingredients.…”

Concentration Dependence of Tensile Behavior in Agarose Gel Using Digital Image Correlation

“…Gels in general serve not only as media in tissue engineering, but also as surrogates for live tissue because of their comparable density and mechanical properties. There is abundant literature on the behavior of agarose gels under quasistatic compression [1][2][3][4][5][6], dynamic compression [7], indentation [2,[8][9][10][11][12][13], dynamic behavior from dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) [1][2][3][14][15][16], hydraulic conductivity [17,18] and permeability [3,18,19] etc. However, literature on tensile properties is very limited [20][21][22][23][24].…”