STUDYING EFFECT OF DIFFERENT PVA BASED FORMULATIONS ON FILM FORMATION AND ANTIMICROBIAL PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Active food packaging is encouraging and rapidly emerging technology in which the antimicrobial agents are incorporated into the packaging materials. It can provide the packed food high quality, safety, and long shelf life, normally by reducing or retarding the growth of microorganisms. Recently, there is great interest in active food packaging films made from biodegradable polymers because of serious environmental problems caused by conventional plastic food packaging material. Antimicrobial PVA films of different concentrations of 1%, 2%, and 3% were prepared by incorporating cinnamaldehyde at a concentration of 15% and experiment has been performed. The growth of microbial species which is gram-negative bacteria E.coli was found to be significantly less in antimicrobial films when compared with reference film. Moreover CFU was decreased by increased CIN content in the films. The aim of this study was to develop active packaging films by incorporating CIN into PVA polymer and investigated their mechanical and physicochemical properties. The antimicrobial activity of the films in vapour phase was assessed by examining the microbiological analyses.