Effect of PLA/PBAT Antibacterial Film on Storage Quality of Passion Fruit during the Shelf-Life

• Main Authors: Rong Zhang, Wenting Lan, Jie Ding, Saeed Ahmed, Wen Qin, Li He, Yaowen Liu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-09-01
• Series: Molecules
• Subjects: passion fruit; PLA/PBAT antibacterial films; storage quality
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/24/18/3378

In this experiment, we studied the effect of poly(lactic acid)/poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PLA/PBAT) blend films on the efficiency of passion fruit preservation at 20 &#176;C. The weight loss, shrinkage index, firmness, and total sugar of passion fruit packaged with PLA/PBAT films had no significant differences compared with PE films during 21 days (<i>p</i> &gt; 0.05). PLA/PBAT films can more effectively reduce the rising of ethanol content and delay the total acid, ascorbic acid, and sensory evaluation. Compared with unpackaged (CK) and polyethylene (PE) films, PLA/PBAT films are more conducive to preserve the overall flavor of passion fruit during storage time, in agreement with sensory evaluation, tested by E-nose, E-tongue, and GC-MS, which also proved that it can effectively maintain the edible quality of passion fruit during storage time. We believe that our study makes a significant contribution to literature because it paves the way to the generalization and application of packaging films based on composite antibacterial polymers and facilitates the commercialization of fresh passion fruit as an important health food.