Recent progress on quality improvement and detection technologies of special foods used for activities in space and aviation: a review

Abstract

This paper focuses on the development and evolution, quality improvement and research progress in the rapidly emerging area of new detection technologies of special foods for use in space and to some extent aviation. The quality improvement aspects covered in this review ranged from the special food processing technology, sterilization treatment and product packaging to new detection technologies for quality assurance based on DNA microarray technology, sensor, imaging technology, carbon nanotubes and novel probe technology.

Keywords:

• Special food
• space
• aviation
• quality improvement
• quality detection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Table 1. Comparison of several space functional foods.

Table 2. Comparison of various space foods.

Table 3. Several aviation food packages.

Table 4. Comparison of various detection methods.

Figure 1. Space food on China’s Shenzhou-9 spacecraft.

(http://war.163.com/photoview/4T8E0001/28319.html#p=8DUNJ81H4T8E0001).

Figure 2. Astronaut eats in spacecraft (Kerwin and Seddon 2002).

Figure 5. V

iew of food packets for the Gemini 7 space flight packaged and ready for loading on the Gemini spacecraft (Levi 2010).

Figure 3. Dehydrated food and water injection device on the Gemini 4 spacecraft (Long et al. 2022).

Figure 4. Application of food 3D printing technology in space food (H. W. Kim and Rhee 2020).

Funding

We acknowledge the financial supports from the National Key R&D Program of China (Contract No. 2017YFD0400501), 111 Project (BP0719028), Jiangsu Province (China) “Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control,” Industry Development Program, Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory Project of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology (No. FMZ202003), National First-Class Discipline Program of Food Science and Technology (No. JUFSTR20180205), all of which enabled us to carry out this study.