A research group featuring members of India’s Ministry of Agriculture and the Farmers Welfare Society of Matsyapuri have developed an ingenious way to monitor whether frozen food has been subjected to “temperature abuse.”
Currently, the temperature of frozen products in food-processing facilities is monitored using temperature recorders. There’s no mechanism for monitoring the temperature of foods during transportation & distribution and in retail stores, but the research aims to change that. The new method employs a small amount of gold and chitosan – a biodegradable polysaccharide which is found in crab and shrimp shells – to highlight temperature changes in frozen stored products though color.
During the experimental sessions, scientists converted a gold solution into chitosan-caped nanoparticles (AuNP), which were then used as an indicator of temperature abuse.
“Chitosan, a biopolymer of crustacean waste can be used as a reducing agent for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles, which is a greener method. Variation in the concentration of chitosan resulted in varying the size of AuNPs and exposure to temperature-abused conditions triggered a distinctively different color thus demonstrating its efficiency to use as thermal history indicators. This can be used to ensure the quality and safety of frozen stored perishable food and pharma products during shipment and transportation to distant locations. The preparation method is very simple and ecofriendly and easily adoptable by the industry,” the paper notes.
According to the researchers, these nanoparticles could be easily placed in food packaging to act as tiny temperature biosensors. The full results of the pilot study were published in full in Science of Food (a Nature journal).
