A Review of Regulatory Standards and Advances in Essential Oils as Antimicrobials in Foods

As essential oils (EOs) possess GRAS status, there is a strong interest in their application to food preservation. Trends in the food industry suggest consumers are drawn to environmentally friendly alternatives and less synthetic chemical preservatives. Although the use of EOs has increased over the years, adverse effects have limited their use. This review aims to address the regulatory standards for EO usage in food, techniques for delivery of EOs, essential oils commonly used to control pathogens and molds, and advances with new active compounds that overcome sensory effects for meat products, fresh fruits and vegetables, fruit and vegetable juices, seafood, dairy products, and other products. This review will show adverse sensory effects can be overcome in various products by the use of edible coatings containing encapsulated EOs to facilitate the controlled release of EOs. Depending on the method of cooking, the food product has been shown to mask flavors associated with EOs. In addition, using active packaging materials can decrease the diffusion rate of the EOs, thus controlling undesirable flavor characteristics while still preserving or prolonging the shelf life of food. The use of encapsulation in packaging film can control the release of volatile or active ingredients. Further, use of EOs in the vapor phase allows for contact indirectly, and use of nanoemulsion, coating, and film wrap allows for the controlled release of the EOs. Research has also shown that combining EOs can prevent adverse sensory effects. Essential oils continue to serve as a very beneficial way of controlling undesirable microorganisms in food systems.

Gum Arabic as an environmentally sustainable polymeric anticorrosive material: Recent progresses and future opportunities

Gum Arabic (GA) is a plant exudate, consisting of glycoproteins (proteins with carbohydrate co-factor or prosthetic group) and polysaccharides mainly consisting of galactose and arabinose. Because of its polymeric nature and tendency to dissolve in water, GA is widely used as anticorrosive materials, especially in the aqueous electrolytes. GA contains various electron rich polar sites through which they easily get adsorbed on metallic surface and behaves as effective anticorrosive materials. Because of its natural and biological origin, GA is regarded as one of the environmental sustainable and edible alternatives to traditional toxic corrosion inhibitors. Present review piece of writing aims to illustrate the assortment of literatures on gum Arabic as a corrosion inhibitor. Limitation of traditional organic corrosion inhibitors and advantages of using GA as an environmental sustainable alternative have also been described along with the mechanism of corrosion inhibition.

Enhancement of Mechanical and Barrier Property of Hemicellulose Film via Crosslinking with Sodium Trimetaphosphate

Hemicellulose is a kind of biopolymer with abundant resources and excellent biodegradability. Owing to its large number of polar hydroxyls, hemicellulose has a good barrier performance to nonpolar oxygen, making this biopolymer promising as food packaging material. Hydrophilic hydroxyls also make the polymer prone to water absorption, resulting in less satisfied strength especially under humid conditions. Thus, preparation of hemicellulose film with enhanced oxygen and water vapor barrier ability, as well as mechanical strength is still sought after. Herein, sodium trimetaphosphate (STMP) was used as esterification agent to form a crosslinked structure with hemicellulose through esterification reaction to render improved barrier performance by reducing the distance between molecular chains. The thus modified hemicellulose film achieved an oxygen permeability and water vapor permeability of 3.72 cm3 × μm × m-2 × d-1 × kPa-1 and 2.85 × 10-10 × g × m-1 × s-1 × Pa-1, respectively, at the lowest esterification agent addition of 10%. The crosslinked structure also brought good mechanical and thermal properties, with the tensile strength reaching 30 MPa, which is 118% higher than that of the hemicellulose film. Preliminary test of its application in apple preservation showed that the barrier film obtained can effectively slow down the oxidation and dehydration of apples, showing the prospect of application in the field of food packaging.

Microencapsulation of Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) Essential Oil Via Spray Drying: Effects of Feed Emulsion Parameters

The purpose of this study was to attempt the encapsulation of lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) essential oil utilizing spray drying technique. An array of process parameters including concentration of wall (15–30%), type of wall materials (maltodextrin, maltodextrin and gum Arabic mixture), and concentration of essential oil (0.5–2.0%) were thoroughly investigated. The results show that the use of sole maltodextrin as encapsulant gave microcapsules characteristics comparable to that of powder produced using maltodextrin and gum Arabic mixture. The encapsulation process that was performed with maltodextrin at the concentration of 30% as wall material and lemongrass essential oil at the concentration of 1.5% as core material showed highest drying yield (84.49%), microencapsulation yield (89.31%) and microencapsulation efficiency (84.75%). Encapsulated essential oils retained most of their major constituents in comparison with the bare essential oils without any significant compromise in product quality.