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Saffron: Perspectives and Sustainability for Active and Intelligent Food Packaging Applications

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Abstract

Active and intelligent packaging can effectively improve the shelf life and monitor food quality in real-time packaged products without affecting nutritional value. With the growing interest in human health and well-being, active packaging integrated with natural functional ingredients has great potential in improving and maintaining food safety and quality and promoting marketability. Saffron has emerged as a promising functional material for active packaging due to its strong antioxidant, non-cytotoxic, anti-inflammatory effects, anticancer, prevention of diabetes, obesity, and medicinal effects. This review discusses and summarizes recent information on using saffron as a multifunctional material for active and intelligent food packaging applications. In particular, research on biocompatible natural polymer-based active packaging films containing saffron is being reviewed. In addition, the prospect of saffron-based intelligent packaging film as a safe freshness indicator for monitoring quality changes in various foods has been discussed. Finally, it highlighted the current challenges, development directions, and prospects for saffron-based active and intelligent packaging materials that will promote the commercialization of safe and sustainable packaging in the food industry. It is expected that the recognition of saffron as a functional packaging material will increase and the possibility of its application as a packaging film will increase.

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Fig. 1
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Adapted from Bellachioma et al. (2022)

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Adapted from Ghaffari and Roshanravan (2019)

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Data Availability

Data supporting the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (2022R1A2B5B02001422).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Food and Nutrition, BioNanocomposite Research Institute, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyungheedae-Ro, Dongdaemun-Gu, Seoul, 02447, Republic of Korea

    Parya Ezati, Ajahar Khan, Jong-Whan Rhim & Swarup Roy

  2. School of Bioengineering and Food Technology, Shoolini University, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, 173229, India

    Swarup Roy

  3. Environmental Science Program, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, 2713, Doha, Qatar

    Zahoor Ul Hassan

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Parya Ezati and Ajahar Khan: Investigation; Formal analysis; Writing-original draft. Jong-Whan Rhim: Funding acquisition; Supervision; Writing-review & editing. Swarup Roy and Zahoor Ul Hassan: Writing-original draft.

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Ezati, P., Khan, A., Rhim, JW. et al. Saffron: Perspectives and Sustainability for Active and Intelligent Food Packaging Applications. Food Bioprocess Technol 16, 1177–1196 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11947-022-02949-3

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