Fungal and plant metabolites formulated into biopolymers, with anti-mold activity for food packaging

One of the greatest problems in food packaging system is the prevention of food from the mold contamination. Indeed, food mold infestation is very dangerous for human health and also can considerably increase the financial cost. In particular, in the bakery products, Penicillium roqueforti and Aspergillus niger are the main contaminators. On the other hand, food packaging systems are responsible to protect food substrate from physical damage, chemical and biological contaminations. In addition, packages are designed to preserve the food quality and safety, extending their shelf-life. However, due to environmental impact of the conventional polymers recently, the attention of researchers and industrial sectors are mainly on bioactive packaging by using bio polymer based package system. Antimicrobial food packaging known as active packing is based on the incorporation of natural bioactive metabolites into the polymer or biopolymer matrices to reduce, inhibit or hinder the growth of microorganisms on the packaged food. In particular, some plants material showed antifungal activity with potential application in food packaging. This project assayed the inhibitory activity of 13 bacterial, fungal and plant metabolites against P.roqueforti and A.niger and selected the most active ones which were cavoxin, ungeremine and ?-costic acid. The potential application of those natural metabolites into bio packaging system was investigated by the formulation of those metabolites into the biopolymer matrix in order to obtain active packaging system to increase the quality of food packaging, the food shelf-life, and microbiological safety.