In recent years, global warming, the depletion of petroleum resources, and the reduction of carbon dioxide emission have become significant worldwide. Environmental considerations have been indispensable to the development and manufacturing industries. Considering this background, we aim to develop new and environment-friendly agricultural materials using Konjac by-products of industrial waste.
Konjac by-products are a natural raw material sourced from the plants of the Amorphophalus family and are nutritious. Availing these advantages, we investigated the development of a novel biodegradable seedling pot manufactured from Konjac by-products, “Tobiko” in Japanese. The results are as follows: (1) The Tobiko seedling pot is able to be simply produced by molding of Tobiko gel which is composed of Tobiko powder and water; (2) The Tobiko seedling pots can maintain stable soil condition concerning sunlight and moisture, because the pot has a water absorbency of an amount almost equal to its own weight, and a light-resistance of 20 days; (3) The Tobiko seedling pot is biodegraded in only 27 days; therefore, the pots have excellent biodegradability compared with conventional biodegradable seedling pots. Therefore, in terms of time base, it is expected that Tobiko will be effectively used in manufacturing biodegradable seedling pots. And we believe to be a new and unique application for Konjac by-products.

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“Shittori” in Japanese is a sensation perceived when we manipulate a fabric. We defined “shittori” sensation was similar to that human′s skin could maintain adequate moisture. The stronger “shittori” sensation for fabrics was accompanied with either the warm or soft. The effective characteristic values to understand “shittori” feeling of fabrics were qmax(the maximum value of heat flux), MIU(mean coefficient of friction), 2HG(hysteresis of shear force at 0.5 degree of shear angle), G(shear stiffness) and WC(compression energy).
We think that it is important to accomplish a comparative study of hand evaluation of “shittori” characteristic for fabrics between Japanese and foreigner. As the first step in our analysis, we examined the English expression for the Japanese “shittori” sensation of fabric. In Hong Kong, we found “baby′s skin” was the preferred descriptor for hand evaluation of Japanese “shittori”. Fifteen words which describe the sense of “shittori” and “baby′s skin” were presented for Japanese subjects. Among those words, “Warmth”, “Smoothness”, “Comfort”, “Slippery”, “Puni-Puni”, “Sensitive”, “White”, “Red” and “Transparence” were common description for both “shittori” and “baby′s skin”. Then the “shittori” feeling for fabrics was evaluated by manipulating fabrics according to the Kendall′s rank method, the Normalized-Rank Approach. “Shittori” and “baby′s skin” were words of similar meaning.

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