Intelligent Packaging

Umut Yucel, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

Ó 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An Introduction to Intelligent Packaging 1

References 2

An Introduction to Intelligent Packaging

Earthen amphorae used to store wine and oil, other pottery works, woven baskets, and wooden barrels used to store fresh produce
are the earliest packaging materials dating back to the ancient era. Unsurprisingly, today’s packaging systems are much more sophis-
ticated and enjoy diverse functionality. Conventional packaging of the modern era provides protection and easy handling for food
materials. The communication of those packages with the customer is limited to labels on them to inform or attract the customer.
Integration of the advancements in multidisciplinary technologies, including food science, chemistry, biology, and material science,
evolved the functionality and purpose of food packages parallel to the needs of the modern society. The functionality of such pack-
ages can serve to actively modify the product or the environment it contains during storage, transportation, and even usage, or serve
as interfaces to communicate with the customer to minimize losses and ensure high quality and safety.
In the last decade there has been a huge leap in the number of scientific articles published in the area of food packaging
(Vanderroost et al., 2014). The extensive research therefore resulted in a diverse, and often confusing, nomenclature adopted to
designate a certain functionality of the package beyond its traditional use, such as active, intelligent, smart, interactive, diagnostic,
modified atmosphere packaging, etc. Still, these packaging systems can be categorized into two general groups based on their histor-
ical origins and functional properties: active packaging (AP) systems, which actively and deliberately modify the food or the envi-
ronment it is held to improve the safety, quality, and convenience of the food, and intelligent packaging (IP) systems, which informs
the consumer about the kinetic changes related to the quality of the food or the environment it is contained. Gas scavenging or
releasing systems as in the modified atmosphere packaging, antimicrobial and antioxidant packages are regarded as AP systems,
and packages integrated with a sensor or an indicator such as time–temperature indicators (TTI), gas indicators, and biosensors
are regarded as IP systems. Although smart packaging sometimes referred to packaging systems, which combine AP and IP technol-
ogies, today it is generally regarded as a special form of IP. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are electronic tracking tags,
which store and wirelessly transmit information for the traceability of the package. RFID technology is useful to prevent fraud;
improve economical losses; and optimize transportation, handling, and storage conditions but are not considered as IP themselves
since they are not responsive to and informative about the kinetic changes related to the quality of food product. RFID can
further enhance the performance of IP when used alongside a sensor by providing location-specific information, and only the
regarded as IP.
IP is generally classified based on the type of sensor used as TTIs, gas sensors, and biosensors. TTI are the earliest and the most
commercialized form of IP technology. Conventionally, the shelf life of food products or their freshness is determined based on
selected marker substances, such as vitamins, color or flavor change, enzyme activity, etc. through predictive models based on accel-
erated shelf-life tests. However, in reality thermal fluctuations and unpredicted events do not often obey the predictions, which may
significantly alter the quality of the food product. TTI are often used as stickers on packages, in which a thermo-sensitive material
mimics the rate of loss of a quality factor to produce a color or color contrast to a reference scale to indicate the level of freshness or
the ‘actual’ shelf life of the product. Two types of TTI are available in the market. Full-history TTIs store the information of cumu-
lative time–temperature history of the package. In this case, the response rate of the indicator (e.g., color change) as a function of
temperature needs to match to that of the selected quality marker (i.e., rate constant and activation energy of the famous Arrhenius
equation). Frozen foods, fish, and meat products require cold-distribution chains to ensure microbial stability and expected quality.
Partial-history TTIs, in which the colorogenic reaction occurs above a determined threshold temperature, indicate only if the product
is exposed to abusive temperatures. More sophisticated systems can also be developed by designing an array of partial-history TTI
systems with varying threshold temperatures to provide information about at what temperature and how long the product stayed.
The major types of commercialized TTI systems can be classified as diffusion-based TTIs (i.e., diffusion of colored esters forms color
contrast alongside a reference scale), enzymatic TTIs (i.e., certain enzymatic reaction changes the environmental conditions, such as
pH, which then causes color change), and polymer-based TTIs (i.e., polymerization reaction forms a color contrast with a reference
scale). All TTIs commonly require an activation step to start the sensing process at the same time when the product enters the
package.
Gas sensors, which are sensitive to change in gas levels selected as a quality marker inside the package, are the other commercially
available IP systems. They can be used to detect gas leakage (e.g., oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.) in MAP systems, gas formation (e.g.,
carbon dioxide, secondary metabolites, etc.) due to microbial contamination, or fruit ripening by the formation of aromatic vola-
tiles and extent of fermentation (e.g., in kimchi) by the formation of organic acids. They often enjoy the use of binding reactions or
redox reactions, pH change, or luminescent dyes to produce color (i.e., easy to interpret by the consumer) controlled by the change

Reference Module in Food Sciences http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100596-5.03374-6 1

2 Intelligent Packaging

in the target gas concentrations. The electrochemical sensors are also being developed, but they are expensive systems and are not
commercially available yet.
Biosensors can be used to design IP with ability to provide online and in situ information about microbial contamination,
growth, and related biological reactions. The easier and more common approach to detect microbial spoilage is by following
the formation of secondary metabolites, such as volatile nitrogen compounds, sulfide indicators, ethanol, organic acids, etc., as
explained in gas sensors. Such analyte-specific bioreceptors can be designed based on enzymes, pH-responsive dyes, antigens,
microorganisms, nucleic acids, or hormones. An ideal biosensor for IP applications, however, need to selectively detect
pathogens on line and in situ even at trace amounts (e.g., for zero-tolerance pathogens). The direct detection of pathogenic
bacteria is often challenging due to lack of desired sensitivity, selectivity, reliability, quick response time, and compliance with
user and applicability as a label to the conventional packaging. Therefore, contrary to extensive research in the area they are not
fully commercialized for IP applications, yet (Brody et al., 2001).
In summary food packaging is still the most important market as it accounts about half of all packaging (Robertson, 2013).
There is therefore a great interest in designing IP with improved functionalities for various applications and further developing
them for commercial applications. Today, there are many companies that develop and commercially produce active and intelligent
packages (Pereira de Abreu et al., 2012 provided an extensive list of commercial products and companies producing them). The
common attributes of IP, which need to be considered during design and development, are that they need to be easy to interpret,
quick, reliable, sensitive, safe, and importantly cheap since the overall packaging cost should not be higher than 25% of the food
material inside (Robertson, 2013).

References

Brody, A.L., Strupinsky, E.R., Kline, L.R., 2001. Active Packaging for Food Applications. Technomic Publishing, Lancaster.
Pereira de Abreu, D.A., Cruz, J.M., Paseiro Losada, P., 2012. Active and intelligent packaging for the food industry. Food Rev. Int. 28, 146–187.
Robertson, G.L., 2013. Food Packaging: Principles and Practice. CRC Press, Boca Raton.
Vanderroost, M., Ragaert, P., Devlieghere, F., Meulenaer, B.D., 2014. Intelligent food packaging: the next generation. Trends Food Sci. Technol. 39 (1), 47–62.