FUZZY CLUSTERING MODELING AND EVALUATION OF SURFACE INTERACTIONS AND EMULSIONS OF SELECTED WHEAT PROTEIN COMBINED TO IOTA-CARRAGEENAN AND GUM ARABIC SOLUTIONS MAHMOUD ABU-GHOUSH 1,5 , MURAD SAMHOURI 2 , EMAD YASEEN 3 and THOMAS HERALD 4 1 Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics Department 2 Department of Industrial Engineering The Hashemite University PO Box 330156, Zarqa 13133, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan 3 Research and Development Solae LLC, St. Louis, MO 4 Food Science Institute Kansas State University 220 Call Hall, Manhattan 66506, KS Accepted for Publication March 6, 2008 ABSTRACT Gums and proteins are valuable ingredients with a wide spectrum of applications. Surface properties (surface tension, interfacial tension, emul- sion activity index [EAI] and emulsion stability index [ESI]) of 4% deami- dated wheat protein (DWP) in a combination with iota-carrageenan (IC) (0.05, 0.1 and 0.5%) or gum arabic (GA) (0.5, 1 and 5%) were investigated. The results showed that the addition of IC to 4% DWP significantly increased the surface tension, interfacial tension, EAI and ESI, whereas the addition of GA to 4% DWP significantly increased the surface tension and decreased the interfacial tension and EAI (except at 5% of GA). In addition, a fuzzy-based clustering model was used to predict the surface properties of the DWP. The fuzzy model achieved accuracies of (97%, 90%, 97% and 75%) for predicting (EAI, ESI, surface tension and interfacial tension), respectively. This approach can be applied to predict many other parameters and proper- ties in the food industry. 5 Corresponding author. TEL: 962-7-85799274; FAX: 962-5-3903350; EMAIL: abulaith@hu.edu.jo Journal of Food Process Engineering •• (2008) ••–••. All Rights Reserved. © Copyright the Authors Journal Compilation © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-4530.2008.00324.x 1