Desenvolvimento e potencial de utilização de embalagens ativas biodegradáveis em hortaliças minimamente processadas

Abstract

With the world population growth, the various recommendations issued by health authorities proposing foods that are more suitable for healthy nutrition, the need for innovation by new renewable technologies as well as the challenges of the postharvest food sector present a challenging picture for academia, which requires an approach that uses multidisciplinarity, where different areas of knowledge can be united in order to generate viable technology under the challenging paradigm stated. Together with these factors, there is a need in Brazil to focus on minimally processed vegetables, both as a means to boost their consumption as well as to reduce their losses. Three vegetables were included in this work as options consistent with the applied technology profile, namely: the baby corn, characterized as a vegetable with high added value with several possibilities for use in culinary products; a pumpkin squash, popular throughout Brazil but which can expand its consumption base through minimal processing and super sweet green corn, an exotic example for most of the country's inhabitants, but which has a distinct sweet taste, being a different sensorial experience when compared to common green corn, which is very widespread in all Brazilian regions. With these different vegetables and the need to use sustainable matrix technologies, it was decided to use the technology of plasticization of cassava starch, where the manufacture of adherent polyethylene films was carried out, in addition to the application of the extrusion process to obtain pellets. The bioplastic materials obtained were associated with active ingredients that act in favor of a better conservation of the vegetable, such as zeolite clay, potassium permanganate and thyme oil. The elaborated work looked at these three types of vegetables in the first chapter, with the subsequent focus on each of these in the sequential chapters.