The following procedure was developed to extract BSG from
basil seeds. About 10 g basil seeds were first washed at least four times in an excess amount of ethanol in order to remove all foreign matter such as dust, dirt, stones, and chaff. After removing ethanol from the seeds by filtration followed by evaporation in an oven at 70◦C, they were steeped in distilled water (water to seed 10:1) at 35◦C for 8 h. Then, the swollen seeds were stirred with a rod paddle blender at 1500 rpm for 10 min to scrape the gum layer off the seed surface. Separation of the gum from the swollen seeds was achieved by filtration with cheese
cloth and the insoluble residue if any was filtered out, leaving a concentration of 14% (w/w). Mathews, Singhal, and Kulkarni (1993) found the purified (alcoholic precipitation) extracted basil seed gum (BSG) contain a small fraction of residual protein (∼1.5%),∼9.7% fat, ∼3.3% ash and ∼80% carbohydrate contents. Fig. 1 shows these seeds before and after swelling in water.