Introduction

FOR many years, various raw materials from agricultural resources have beenused to produce renewable, biodegradable, or edible “agricultural-materials” or “agro-packaging.” Among agricultural resources, some of them rich in proteins have long been used empirically as raw material. For instance, buttons were made from formaldehyde-treated caseins, and Henry Ford manufactured automobile parts from mixtures of soy protein and phenol-formaldehyde resins. Numerous cereal and vegetable proteins (e.g., corn zein, wheat gluten, and soy protein) and animal proteins (e.g., milk proteins, collagen, gelatin, keratin, and myofibrillar proteins) are commonly used or have been tested to form films and coatings (Cuq et al., 1998a).