The Effects of tapioca starch-chitosan-palm olein composite edible film on the quality of milk candy during storage

Abstract

Edible film usage has been growing to replace the non-environmental friendly plastic packaging. It can be applied as primary packaging in confectionary/candy products. The current study objective was to evaluate the quality changes of milk candy product which was wrapped using tapioca starch (TS)-chitosan (CH)-palm olein (PO) composite edible film as its primary packaging. Milk candy was produced from the caramelization of UHT bovine milk, sugar and margarine mixture. Various TS-CH-PO composite film solutions were prepared with different CH concentrations i.e. 0.6%, 0.8%, 1.0% and 1.2% (w/v). The solutions were homogenized and dry casted on a teflon-coated pan, resulting in edible film. Milk candy wrapped in edible film and control were stored at ambient temperature and analyzed periodically for its quality changes. Data were collected from 3 repetitions and presented as a descriptive analysis. The resulted edible films had thickness of 0.036-0.053 mm and water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) of 0.038-0.042 g/hr. After 22 storage days, weight loss of control sample was 1.87% while the best treatment observed from 0.8% CH with 0.98% loss. The moisture content decrease for control and best treatment were 4.1% and 1.4%, respectively. Milk candy hardness showed an initial sharp increase followed by steady decrease pattern. The highest hardness value after 22 days storage amongst the treated samples was 3553 N from 0.8% CH concentration. The increase in total plate count of control was 2.25 logs CFU/g while the best treated sample showed an increase of 0.67 logs CFU/g after 8 days of storage. TS-CH-PO composite edible film has shown the ability to retard the negative quality changes of milk candy during storage.