ACTIVE BIOPACKAGING BASED ON PROTEINS

NORMA E. MARCOVICH; MARÍA ROBERTA ANSORENA; MARIANA PEREDA

Biopackaging

CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group

Lugar: Boca Raton; Año: 2017; p. 347 - 389

Active food packaging is currently one of the most studied areas, stressing the development of new techniques capable of improving conservation and food quality in terms of their interaction with the packaging. The expansion of active packaging has led to advances in many applications incorporating properties such as antioxidant and antimicrobial activities, controlled respiration rates, and reducing water vapor permeability. Polymers, and in particular biomass-derived polymers, are the preferred materials for active packaging because of their intrinsic properties which includes good film forming properties and the possibility of combining several polymers through blending or multilayer assembly in order to tailor the application, constituting an ideal carrier for active agents, with the advantage of being adaptable in terms of controlled release. Active films based on biopolymers also offer potential as a way to overcome the limitations of synthetic plastics, since they are biodegradable and thus, could limit the accumulation of residues reducing therefore the environmental impact of conventional packaging materials. Films, casings and coatings made from proteins are effective barriers against oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and aroma. An additional advantage is that proteins can be processed by diverse methods such as dissolution-solvent evaporation or thermo-mechanical processing to produce films with suitable mechanical properties. Moreover, literature have shown that protein coatings or films require relatively lower amounts of added antimicrobial agents to reach the desired effect as compared to the synthetic polymer or to other biopolymer films. Therefore, numerous proteins such as corn zein, wheat gluten, soy, gelatin fish and milk proteins, etc. have been studied as potential film-forming agents. Also, these protein films were blended with others proteins, polysaccharides and lipids to form composite films. In addition, a new class of materials represented by bio-nanocomposites with enhanced barrier, mechanical and thermal properties has also been considered as a promising option for active packaging materials. Thus, this chapter reviews the main characteristic of selected proteins and presents a summary of the last findings regarding their corresponding active packaging systems.