UN SDG
Call for SR&TD Project Grants - 2017
€228.235,90
Novel Anthocyanin-Based Smart Sensors for Food Packaging.
Luís Miguel Neves Ferreira Serra Cruz
REQUIMTE - Rede de Química e Tecnologia - Associação
Other Engineering and Technologies
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
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FOOD PACKAGING - a sustainable technological opportunity
Nowadays, there is an increasing concern about the safety, quality and shelf-life of food products. The development of fully biodegradable smart packages that provide information on food conditioning to the consumer are gaining attention. Intelligent packaging is defined as a food packaging system that can monitor and inform food conditions to consumers, in real time, through the incorporation of active species that are triggered by an external stimuli (pH, water, O2). Since pH change is an important factor to report spoilage in many food products, the use of plant-based pH sensitive dyes such as anthocyanins (ANC) is currently of great interest for food packaging applications as pH-sensors, instead of synthetic ones, because of their low toxicity and high biocompatibility.
THE GOAL - to use anthocyanin chemical features
One of the most fascinating properties associated with ANC is their pH-dependent color variation in solution under different equilibrium forms (Figure 1): they are red at low pH values, colorless and pale yellow at moderately acid to neutral and blue at basic pH values. However, the use of their native forms in food packaging is somehow limited because their color variation in the pH range of food spoilage (pH 5-7) is not very noticeable. To overcome these issues, development of chemical transformations of ANC, obtained from recycling of food industry by-products, is intended in order to have a wider color variation within the pH of spoilage food and to produce efficient pH-sensors (Figure 2). Furthermore, the fine-tuning of their equilibrium constants (pKa, pKh) will be done by host-guest complexes (e.g. cucurbiturils, micelles) to obtain a specific sensor range for a food product. In order to limit the reactivity of the produced sensors with the matrix and to allow a controlled release to external media, encapsulation process will be studied considering different biomaterials. The incorporation of adequate anthocyanin-based pH-sensors in food packaging with perceptive color variation within the food spoilage pH-window will be a crucial development to give a real-time qualitative information to consumer about food shelf-life.
THE RESEARCH PLAN - the team know-how to reach new products
This project includes ANC extraction, chemical transformations, physical-chemical characterization, biological studies, encapsulation and incorporation in biopolymeric layers. The PI has more than 10 years of experience on ANC extraction from sustainable food wastes, as well as in the synthesis of ANC derivatives and study of their chromatic properties. This project will be carried out in collaboration with Prof. Pina (FCT-UNL), expert in the physical-chemical characterization of ANC compounds and with Dr. Tedim (CICECO-UA), an experienced researcher in the development of smart nanostructured materials loaded with active species for application in functional coatings.
Anthocyanin derivativesModulation / EncapsulationpH sensorsFood packaging