ANALYSIS OF THE BROWNING INDEX OF  CHITOSAN GLUCOSE GAMBIER COMPLEX  (MAILARD REACTION) AS A BASIC STUDY  OF NATURAL PRESERVATIVES FOR  PROCESSED FOOD PRODUCTS

Keywords: Browning, Chitosan, Gambier, Mailard, and Preservative

The increasing number of shrimp shells has caused

environmental pollution problems, and no suitable concept of

natural preservation has been discovered. Chitosan and

gambier have antibacterial characteristics. Glucose chitosan

has antioxidant characteristics. However, there has been no

research on the formulation that forms a complex solution.

This research is intended to be a basic study of the

determination of natural preservatives while searching for the

ideal formulation of chitosan, glucose, and gambier. The

browning index was examined in this study to determine the

optimal Maillard reaction to be used as a natural preservative.

The experiment adopted a complete randomized design and

was conducted with three groups. The treatment used

gambier concentrations (A): A1 = 2%, A2 = 4%, and A3 = 6%,

which used the same chitosan and glucose concentrations of

1%. The research samples were prepared with modifications

of chitosan, glucose, and gambier that were changed into a

preservation solution. Testing the browning index, or Maillard

Reaction used a spectrophotometer in Sriwijaya University

laboratory. Treatment A3 had the highest absorbance which

was 1.389, whereas treatment A1 had the lowest absorbance

which was 0.386. According to this research, the higher

browning color meant it had a high antionxidant. Based on the

research, namely 6% gambier concentration, treatment A3

produced a high antioxidant.