Edible Coatings: An Innovative Green Technology for Quality Maintenance of Fresh Cut Fruits and Vegetables
Pooja Nikhanj, Juhi Kumari and Priyanka Jindal
2025/02/11
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14851677
ABSTRACT
Fresh produce is considered as highly beneficial for human health. Post harvest losses and improper storage cause quality related issues. Factors like dehydration, browning, microbial growth, firmness loss, etc contribute to quality loss of fresh-cut fruit. Hence, there are technologies developed to reduce like modified atmospheric packaging, disinfectant washing, and edible coatings have been used to prevent post-harvest losses for quality loss prevention. The use of edible coatings is an area of focus in food industries. Edible coatings have gained considerable attention due to their ability to extend fruit and vegetables shelf life. These coatings are a novel type of primary packaging made up of polysaccharides, proteins, lipids or mixture of these types. They are known to improve quality and appearance of fresh products by decreasing aroma loss and by maintaining its structural integrity. Active coatings can carry supplementary ingredients like antimicrobials, antioxidants, antibrowning agents, texture enhancers, etc which has promising potential for shelf life extension. Information about various types of coatings will help the food processors to identify the most effective formulations to be used for preservation. It is very important to monitor consumer preferences towards the coated products to increase the acceptability of coated fruits and vegetables. This review summarizes the advantages of edible coatings with their types, applying methods and their effect on physicochemical and microbiological and sensorial properties of fresh cut fruits and vegetables.
AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS
Department of Microbiology, Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana-141004, Punjab, India
CITATION
Nikhanj P, Kumari J and Jindal P (2025) Edible Coatings: An Innovative Green Technology for Quality Maintenance of Fresh Cut Fruits and Vegetables. Environmental Science Archives 4(1): 105-113.
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