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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Healthy Processed Foods Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #346264
Research Project: New Sustainable Processing Technologies to Produce Healthy, Value-Added Foods from Specialty Crops

Location: Healthy Processed Foods Research

Title: Layer-by-layer alginate and fungal chitosan based edible coatings applied to fruit bars

Author
item Bilbao-Sainz, Cristina
item Chiou, Bor-Sen
item Punotai, Kaylin
item Olson, Donald
item Williams, Tina
item Wood, Delilah - De
item RODOV, VICTOR - Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center
item POVERENOV, ELENA - Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center
item McHugh, Tara

Submitted to: Journal of Food Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/12/2018
Publication Date: 5/30/2018
Citation: Bilbao-Sainz, C., Chiou, B., Punotai, K.L., Olson, D.A., Williams, T.G., Wood, D.F., Rodov, V., Poverenov, E., McHugh, T.H. 2018. Layer-by-layer alginate and fungal chitosan based edible coatings applied to fruit bars. Journal of Food Science. 83(7):1880-1887. https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.14186.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.14186

Interpretive Summary: During harvesting of mushrooms, their stalk bases are generated as a waste product. These bases comprise approximately 25% to 33% of the weight of fresh mushrooms and are normally used as low-economic value animal feed and compost. However, the stalk bases can be used to obtain chitosan. Chitosan is a biopolymer with good film forming properties. In this work we used fungal chitosan in combination with alginate to produce bi-layer coatings to preserve the quality of fruit bars enriched with ascorbic acid.

Technical Abstract: Food waste is currently being generated at an increasing rate. One proposed solution would be to convert it to biopolymers for industrial applications. We recovered chitin from mushroom waste and converted it to chitosan to produce edible coatings. We then used layer-by-layer (LbL) electrostatic deposition of the polycation chitosan and the polyanion alginate to coat fruit bars enriched with ascorbic acid. The performance of the LbL coatings was compared with those containing single layers of fungal chitosan, animal origin chitosan and alginate. Bars containing alginate-chitosan LbL coatings showed increased ascorbic acid content, antioxidant capacity, firmness and fungal growth prevention during storage. Also, the origin of the chitosan did not affect the properties of the coatings.