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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agro-Food Safety
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1571114
This article is part of the Research Topic Sustainable Active Packaging for Food Safety and Preservation: Technological, Consumer, and Environmental Perspectives View all 4 articles
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One of the main challenges facing the fresh-cut produce industry is maintaining the quality and food safety of these products to ensure both consumer satisfaction, which includes not further compromising the environment by following the global trend toward positive environmental footprints and the spirit of circular economy. Bio-based polymer blend films have emerged as a novel alternative to replace traditional plastics due to their biodegradability, sustainability, and environmental friendliness characteristics. In this work, we evaluated the properties of gelatin/chitosan composite films and coatings incorporated with thyme essential oil (TEO) in free form and microencapsulated in β-cyclodextrin. The incorporation of free and encapsulated TEO enhance the blocking properties of the films against UV-visible light (opacity values of 5.25 and 7.54 for 4% TEO content, respectively) and excellent in vitro antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. Films incorporated with encapsulated TEO showed improvement in tensile strength and water vapor permeability, with respect to both, neat composite films and films incorporated with free TEO, while films incorporated with free thyme essential oil exhibited enhanced elongation at break. In addition, encapsulation can slow down the release rate of TEO from the films allowing the bioactive to remain active for much longer time. After 12 days of refrigerated storage (5 °C), minimally processed kiwi-fruit coated with film forming solutions incorporated with encapsulated TEO showed reduced weight loss (4.2% reduction showed by kiwi slices coated with Ch-gel-TEO-βCD-4% formulation vs. 7.5% reduction exhibited by kiwi slices stored without coating), enhanced antioxidant properties (53% increment for kiwi slices coated with Ch-gel-TEO-βCD-4% compared to uncoated ones), as well as, significant reductions in the total mesophilic aerobic bacteria and yeast and mold counts (reductions of 3.37 and 2.93 Log CFU g -1 , respectively, for kiwi slices coated with Ch-gel-TEO-βCD-4% formulation compared to kiwi slices stored without coating). The sensory acceptability kiwifruit coated with encapsulated TEO was the highest among tested samples, with no adverse effects on flavor and general acceptability. These results provide unique insights into new bio-packaging materials for the development of novel health foods materials with improved nutritional quality and sensory attributes, superior antimicrobial activity and extended shelf life.
Keywords: Active films, Thyme essential oil, Minimally processed, kiwi fruit, Bio-based polymers
Received: 05 Feb 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Marcovich and Ansorena. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
María Roberta Ansorena, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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