Polysaccharide-Based Membrane for Packaging Applications

Abstract

The excess consumption of non-biodegradable synthetic plastics, primarily in food packaging industries has been one of the important sources of environmental pollution. As a consequence, the development of natural polymer-based membranes for packaging of food products has gained attention of researchers worldwide. The natural polymers used as raw material for packaging purposes should be abundant in nature, low cost, renewable, highly biocompatible, and biodegradable. Among natural polymers, polysaccharides emerge as a potential candidate in packaging applications because of its ability to form packaging films with semi-permeable barriers to O2 and moisture, good mechanical properties, better visual aspects, and reduced microbial contamination, thus improving the selflife and quality of food. The most commonly used polysaccharides for packaging development are starch, pectin, cellulose, chitosan, carrageenan, and alginate. Several features such as lower water resistance, mechanical properties and price impose a limitation to the wider use and commercialization of polysaccharide-based packaging material. However, with an increase in dynamics of research in this area several strategies for example the development of nano-based polysaccharides packaging materials to improve the features or to overcome the limitations offered by traditional polysaccharide packaging materials.