This book is the latest in a series of biannual publications and describes the proceedings of the 9th Gums and Stabilisers for the Food Industry meeting held at Wrexham in July 1997. It consists of a collection of papers based on the oral presentations given at the meeting. I have a special affection for the Wrexham meetings and the published proceedings. My interest in food science began when I joined the Institute of Food Research in 1979, and the Wrexham meeting in 1981 was my ®rst food science meeting. I have contributed to all the subsequent meetings, and the proceedings provide a record of the interest, developments and changes in this ®eld. The present conference was divided into sessions dealing with structural and functional properties of polysaccharides, protein systems, functional interactions in mixed biopolymer systems, processing developments, new methodologies and nutritional aspects. Research on food polysaccharides has always been a feature of these meetings, and this area was well represented. A highlight of the meeting was the Pilnik Lecture, delivered by Dr H Schols, a disciple of Professor Pilnik, on the structural features of native and commercial pectins; an authoritative review of these complex polysaccharides. Most of the papers in the polysaccharide session dealt with the rheology of dispersions and gels for a range of polysaccharides, including microparticulate cellulose, curdlan, nonstarch cereal polysaccharides, carob, enzymatically modi®ed tamarind xyloglucan and the Beijerinckia species polysaccharide CC-70, plus studies on the in¯uence of salts and saccharides on the gelatinisation and retrogradation of rice starch. The two papers on gum arabic deal with speci®cation and control and possible replacements for the confectionery area. New food additives were represented by a timely introduction to the potential of the bacterial derived Primacel 2 . Proteins tend to have been neglected at many of the meetings, but in this case the protein session covered the entire spectrum of food proteins: milk, plant, meat and egg proteins, plus an introduction to proteins from marine algae (Spiorulina species). The impressive confocal microscopy images of phaseseparated protein systems illustrate the potential for this technique in food science. The academic and commercial interest in mixed biopolymer systems has