Monitoring the Quality of Perishable Foods: Opportunities for Intelligent Packaging

Abstract

This review paper discusses opportunities for intelligent packaging for monitoring directly or indirectly quality attributes of perishable packaged foods. The possible roles of intelligent packaging as a tool in supply chain management are discussed as well as the barriers to implement this kind of technology in commercial applications. Cases on pasteurized milk and fresh cod fillets illustrate the application of different intelligent packaging concepts to monitor and estimate quality attributes. Conditions influencing quality (e.g., temperature–time) can be monitored to predict the quality of perishable products when the initial quality is known and rather constant (e.g., pasteurized milk). Products with a highly variable initial quality (e.g., fresh fish) require sensors monitoring compounds correlated with quality.

Keywords:

• Intelligent packaging
• food quality
• perishable foods
• sensors
• indicators
• supply chain management

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research is financially supported by the Wageningen University Graduate School (VLAG) and the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (KB 030013121).