Characterization Techniques for Nanotechnology Assisted Edible Food Packaging

The nanostructured materials exhibiting one of the dimensional size ranges of <100 nm play an important role in multiple sectors for delivering improved fundamental quality of life and further helps in socio-economic development. Additionally, bionanostructured materials are focused in developing several building blocks of nanotechnology aided edible food packaging materials, which helps in the formation of various biopolymeric nanocomposites. The factors which determine the nature of a nanomaterial are its physicochemical properties viz., surface area, surface charge, hydrophobicity of the surface, thermal stability of the NPs, and its antimicrobial activity. The nanomaterials possess tailored-made properties as compared to the bulk materials, and even at the molecular level; it is reactive due to the surface chemistry and high surface to volume ratio. In this regard, the bionanomaterials are an emerging interest in the development of biodegradable edible food packaging technologies for delivering improved quality and shelf-life of the packaged material. In the current chapter, the characterization techniques used for the study of a unique property of nanomaterials and nanocomposites will be detailed, where, the nanomaterials are generally characterized by microscopic (surface morphology), spectroscopic techniques, and others. Additionally, the different characterisation techniques used to study the various properties of edible packaging will be discussed which would be helpful in knowing the impact of the biomaterial in the edible packaging sectors. The characterization techniques require to study the storage life of food products such as physicochemical properties, respiration rates, mathematical modeling of respiration rates (using regression function model and enzyme kinetics model), sensory evaluation, texture analysis, microbiological analysis, and others will be detailed. In this regards, the texture of food products during storage time may be degraded which make them unacceptable for the consumers, thus texture is an essential factor to be analyzed during storage life of food products. Further, the texture profile analysis (TPA) of food products can be done via the profile analysis of mechanical measurements and acoustic measurements. Another factor, the migration of food packaging components to food products is a crucial problem for stored food products. Thus, the current chapter will detail elaborately the materials property and methods required for studying the storage life of food products with and without edible food packaging materials.