As strawberry lovers know, there's a thin line between a perfectly ripe one and a past-its-prime one. Fortunately, there might be a shelf-life-expanding solution on the way, courtesy of a team of researchers from the University of São Paulo.
The team unveiled its edible biofilm solution made of agricultural and fishing waste in a study published in the journal Food Chemistry and described the promising results in a news release.
In twelve-day tests, refrigerated strawberries coated with the film warded off fungi for six to eight days, as opposed to four for those that weren't. The coated strawberries lost a mere 11% in weight while preserving more of the fruit's aroma and incurring no noticeable changes in taste or visual characteristics from uncoated ones.
Interestingly, the biofilm solution predates the team's focus on strawberries. The first author of the study, Mirella Romanelli Vicente Bertolo, was able to uncover the preservative power of pomegranate peel in prior research.
"More than 40% of the pomegranate, depending on the variety, is made up of peel, which is wasted," said professor Stanislau Bogusz, Jr. "Our idea was to use this waste to obtain extracts rich in phenolic compounds with antioxidant and antimicrobial activities."
They paired pomegranate's antioxidants with gelatin and chitosan, a polymer derived from shrimp skeletons, to create the film for fruit. Strawberries were the perfect test subject.
"The strawberry is a fruit that has very high respiratory activity and a very low pH [acidity]," Bogusz Jr. explained. "It's therefore very susceptible to microbial attack."
In testing, the film backed up the team's hypotheses by attaching to the strawberries' surface and providing protection against moisture loss, metabolism, and contamination. The researchers believe that the film will be effective on other fruits and that it can also help stem losses in supermarkets or consumers' refrigerators.
"By applying the coating, it was possible to double the shelf life of strawberries kept under refrigeration and delay the dehydration of the fruit, while preserving the taste, texture and volatile compounds that give the fruit its characteristic aroma," Bertolo stated.
The inventive solution could help fight the rampant food waste that plagues America and countries around the globe. Strawberries in particular pose a challenge for retailers as they spoil quickly and have to be removed from shelves. For the ones that do reach customers, strawberries are a ticking time bomb.
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Not buying food I don't need 🧐 Consumers at home do have some remedies outside of tossing spoiled strawberries into a planet-heating landfill, including composting or planting in their gardens. Still, a far more satisfying outcome is enjoying the fruit you paid for and getting the most out of your groceries.
The Brazilian team, meanwhile, has filed a patent for the coating and hopes to license it. They estimate that it will cost BRL 0.15 per fruit (three cents USD) per piece of fruit.
"This is a cost that consumers may be willing to pay for fruit with a longer shelf life and greater usage," Bertolo suggested.
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