Improvement of smoked and fermented dried fish processing and application of essential oils as their natural preservatives.

Abstract

A key factor limiting fish utilization is its extreme perishability due, especially, to microbial and autolytic spoilage during processing and storage. Thus, various traditional techniques are used to limit post-capture losses, in particular in West Africa where techniques such as drying, salting, smoking and fermentation are used individually or in combination for the conservation of fresh fish. Unfortunately, these techniques have long been handcrafted and influence the quality and shelf life of manufactured products. In other hand, recently the disappearance of many active synthetic substances in foods protection has resulted to a renewed interest in naturally occurring substances. In parallel to these disappearances, the regulatory environment incites strongly to increase the use of alternative methods to chemical control. In this review, we have summarized the innovations suggested in the literature for the improvement of fish processing techniques in order to ensure the manufactured product quality. Results show that several innovations have been proposed. This mainly concerns the invention of smoking and drying devices, the development of starters and the use of essential oils for fish preservation.