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The first known use of agar was in Japan in 1658, when it was used as a food gelling material. Japanese used to extract agar from Gracilaria, by freezing and thawing method which was totally dependent upon the weather back then. Tarazaemon Minoya of Japan is generally considered as the discoverer of agar in 1963. Later its use extended during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Agar was being used a lot before than other phycocolloids, like alginates or carrageens. These phycocolloids came into use almost 200 years later. In year 1859 Payen introduced agar in Europe as a food stuff and Koch introduced its microbiological uses in 1882 right before he introduced Koch Pastulates in 1884. Still western countries became familiar with agar in the nineteenth century. In 1905, a lot broader use of agar was established with its introduction in raw materials and manufacturing processes in Japan [1]. Later in 1949, some articles were published describing more details on various characteristics of agar associated with its raw materials and development, years before when its chemical structure was described, spectroscopy like infrared spectroscopy was developed, even much more refined techniques like Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) proton and ¹³C spectroscopy became feasible. Though, later NMR proton and ¹³C spectroscopy helped understanding its molecular structure thoroughly. Mantell [1] provided the international commercial data of agar about quality of agar worldwide and various production processes. It covered most of the data during the period of world war two and post war years until 1950s. Two research articles by M. Glicksman in 1969 [2] and 1983 [3] were published, revising in-depth knowledge about hydrocolloids. These papers provided a good understanding of chemical structures and applications of agar. In 1995 Norman Stanley [4] published a book chapter defining molecular structure as well as properties of agar gel.

Agar was approved as GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) in 1972 by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [5] due to its past usage as food in East Asian countries for more than three hundred years. Agar cleared all the three standard tests done by FDA to safeguard its consumptions as food product. These tests were toxicology test [6], teratology test [7] and test for mutagenesis [8].