Study of Rehydration Properties of Powder Produced from Chelated Skim Milk Kristina Ellice TanPoor rehydration properties of skim milk powder (SMP) can impact processing efficiency and functionality in finished product applications. Rehydration can be split into four stages: wettability, sinkability, dispersibility, and solubility. Previous work has suggested that chelator addition during SMP manufacture leads to higher solubility compared to SMP without chelators. This study focuses on the addition of ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) or sodium citrate dihydrate (SCD) at concentrations of 5, 10, and 15 mM to skim milk prior to evaporating and spray drying. The objective of this investigation was to determine the effects of the chelator additions on each SMP rehydration property (wettability, sinkability, dispersibility, and solubility) during reconstitution to 10% total solids. SCD 15 mM, SCD 10 mM, and SCD 5 mM did not have a significant effect on wettability as measured by IDF method (p-value 0.3234, 0.6376, and 1.0000, respectively). However, SCD 15 mM, SCD 10 mM, and SCD 5 mM had higher levels of solubility as measured by particle size analysis of reconstituted 10%TS samples (p-value <0.0001 for all levels) and by solubility index (p-value <0.0001 for all levels), compared to the control. EDTA 15 mM and EDTA 10 mM treated SMP's had statistically significantly lower initial wettability compared to the control as measured by both contact angle (p-value <0.0001 and 0.0002 respectively) and International Dairy Federation (IDF) method (p-value <0.0001 and 0.0031 respectively). This suggests that EDTA 15 v mM and EDTA 10 mM treated SMP's had high surface hydrophobicity. However, both treatments had higher levels of solubility compared to the control, as measured by particle size distribution of a fully solubilized reconstituted 10%TS sample (p-value <0.0001 for both levels) and by solubility index (p-value <0.0001 for both levels).Changes in the rehydration properties may be due to a shift in the calcium and phosphorus behavior of the treated samples, as measured by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). The changes to the solubility index could be due to a sequence of events. First, the chelators chelate all the ionic calcium in the serum.The decrease in ionic calcium shifts the protein-mineral balance between the minerals in the casein micelle and the minerals in the serum, which leads to a depletion of colloidal calcium phosphate, and a subsequent release of caseins from the initial micelle structure.This behavior influenced by EDTA or SCD dissolves the calcium phosphate bridge so that nanoclusters in the casein micelle do not exist (Dalgleish and Corredig, 2012).Hence, the casein micelle would be disrupted into individual caseins that may create the appearance that the solution as a whole has higher solubility, as seen in the particle size analyses of fully rehydrated reconstituted 10%TS samples and in the solubility index.Overall, the findings provide insight on h...