Gum arabic from acacia tree

Gum arabic from acacia tree is extracted from the branches of Acacia senegal and Acacia seyal trees. It is an edible dried gummy exudate. Gum Arabic has high solubility and is used in food industry as a stabilizer, emulsifier, flavouring agent, thickener and surface-finishing agent. It initiates turbidity or hinders sugar crystallization. Gum arabic inhibits color pigmentation and protein precipitation in wine production.

Gum arabic from acacia tree has been used:

• as an emulsifying agent to determine lipase activity in shrimps.
• for the visualization of mossy fiber sprouting.
• as an immunogen and for coating microtitre wells in plate-trapped antigen ELISAs (PTA-ELISAs).
• for silver enhancement for immunohistochemistry.
• as a component for Timm′s staining solution.
• in nitrocellulose-based soil adhesion assay.
• to separate few-layer graphene (FLG) from bulk graphite layers.

Believed to be a branched polymer of galactose, rhamnose, arabinose, and glucuronic acid as the calcium, magnesium, and potassium salts with a mol. wt. of approx. 250,000.