Engineering Methods for Packaging Design of Perishable Products

Dear Colleagues,

Engineering packaging design means that we can determine the properties of foods and of packaging materials and infer the appropriate characteristics of the latter that provide the maximum benefit to the former. The importance of this subject has not abated, from the relevance of extending shelf life to minimise undue losses to the need to replace oil-based plastics by renewable materials, the study of the dynamic interaction between product and package is key to improve the sustainability of food productions systems.

Engineering methods of packaging design need to successfully address three major elements: the kinetics of the biochemical and/or microbial metabolisms underpinning the consumption and production of gases in the package atmosphere; the permeance of the package to those gases; molecular exchange between package material and product (including both the absorption of flavours by the package and tainting of the product by the package constituents).

In all cases there are unresolved issues. For instance, in the case of respiration rates the determination of accurate parameters for Michaelis–Menten models, especially carbon dioxide-inhibited cases (but not only) has not received due attention, nor have we gathered sufficient data on the influence of ethylene content and even humidity in the atmosphere on the respiration rate parameters. In the case of permeance, the influence of water vapour/water content of the plastic in its permeance has been insufficiently well-considered especially for hydrophilic materials, which most bio-based plastics tend to be. In terms of molecular exchanges between package and product, there is very little information yet on the performance of the new bio-based materials being proposed in this domain.

I therefore believe that as we sit at the edge of a new boom in the research into bio-based renewable plastics, it is a good time to reflect on the state of the art and recent advances in the methods for the engineering design of packages, their benefits and limitations. This is the purpose of a Special Issue of Applied Science, which I therefore believe will be a valuable reference for researchers in the future.

One very important feature of the papers that we will be publishing to maximise their impact is their usability. We have to recognise that many companies handling agricultural produce do not avail of sophisticated software or mathematically-oriented staff. We should propose end results that are easy to apply if we wish to see the methods that we propose being used widely.

Dr. Jorge Oliveira
Guest Editor

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