Investigation of jettability morphology and functionality of bio based H2S visual indicators

Abstract

Meat is highly perishable due to the presence of moisture and nutrients. Improper storage conditions of meat packages could lead to spoilage of the meat by chemical and biological activities. The expiry date of the product on the package does not indicate the meat quality. Intelligent packaging solutions provide a mechanism to indicate the quality of the food by incorporating sensors or indicators on the packaging material. Freshness indicators indicate the quality of the food product by reacting with the by-products of the food deterioration reaction. Many chemical dyes and nanomaterials have been developed into freshness indicator. While few biobased materials have been explored as experimental prototypes to indicate the food quality, they are not fully developed for fabrication to suit commercial applications. Hence, the objective of this research work is to investigate the feasibility of formulating and fabricating biobased freshness indicators for meat by inkjet printing method. H2S is one of the potential precursor that indicates the meat deterioration reaction. Myoglobin and ferritin immobilized in chitosan were explored in this work to indicate the presence of H2S and piezoelectric Drop-on-demand inkjet printing method was used to fabricate the indicators. All the three biobased materials namely chitosan, myoglobin and ferritin were formulated into solutions with appropriate physical properties to get consistent jettability in the inkjet printer. newline