**1. Introduction**

Food oil emulsions are significant components of food. Whole egg, egg yolk and egg white are typical ingredients in a range of food oil emulsions, such as mayonnaise and salad dressing, as these materials are efficient, natural emulsifiers [1] for a variety of oil/water (O/W) and water/oil (W/O) emulsions. The high emulsifying capacity of egg is related to the phospholipids (lecithin), lipoproteins (low-density lipoproteins, and high-density lipoproteins) and non-associated proteins (livetin and phosvitin) [2,3]. These proteins have amphiphilic properties and act as surface-active substances in multiphase systems, such as mayonnaise.

Unfortunately, egg products are one of the more frequent agents associated with food allergies, especially in infants and young children [4]. Egg allergens are mainly present in egg white. Ovalbumin, constituting 54% of egg white protein [4], is one of the major egg allergens [5]. In addition, egg is not suitable for consumers with special dietary restrictions, and those that cannot eat egg for religious reasons or personal lifestyle choices [6]. Moreover, egg yolk contains cholesterol (5.2% of total lipid) which is linked to cardiovascular disease.

Although a cholesterol limit is not mentioned in the 2015–2020 Dietary Guideline for Americans, it is still recommended that the elderly and people with previous incidents of heart disease limit their dietary cholesterol intake [6]. Furthermore, a segmen<sup>t</sup> of consumers cite environmental concerns related to egg production as a rationale to avoid egg consumption [7]. Therefore, many scientists and food processing companies are developing innovative new egg replacements to cater to a growing demand for egg alternatives.

Aquafaba (AQ) is the viscous liquid resulting from cooking chickpea seed or other legumes in water [8]. AQ has been gaining popularity since 2014, when a novel recipe blogger used the leftover liquid from a chickpea can as an egg replacement in vegan meringue [9]. Due to its desirable foaming and emulsification properties, AQ is now widely used by the vegan community as an egg replacement in many food products, such as mayonnaise, meringues and baked goods. Chickpea AQ components have been identified by Shim et al. (2018) [10]. Its application as a foaming agen<sup>t</sup> has been reported in several studies [11,12]. However, the substances conferring AQ egg-similar emulsion properties have only been partially elucidated. Meanwhile, AQ qualities differ among diverse cooking conditions and legume genotypes. Therefore, chickpea cultivar selection and AQ process standardization are required to assure the quality of both AQ and AQ-based emulsions.

Based on previous studies and AQ functional properties, the central hypothesis of this research is that AQ emulsion properties not only differ among chickpea cultivars, but also have correlations with chickpea seed components and physicochemical properties. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to prepare AQ from major chickpea cultivars and use this product to produce food oil emulsions then compare the properties of those emulsions. In addition, physicochemical properties and hydration kinetics of the different chickpea cultivars used in this study were determined to investigate possible correlations among these parameters and AQ emulsion properties.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**
