There has been increasing interest in exploring alternatives to conventional plastic food packaging to address associated environmental concerns. Among these alternatives, biopolymers derived from natural sources such as starch, cellulose, polylactic acid (PLA), polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), and proteins have gained significant attention. This review highlights the applications and performance of these biopolymer-based materials, particularly in terms of their mechanical strength, moisture resistance, and gas barrier properties. However, most commercially available biopolymers still lag conventional synthetic plastics in terms of functionality and overall performance. Their high-water absorption, poor gas barrier properties, and elevated production costs limit their large-scale application in food packaging. Previous studies have demonstrated that biopolymers are generally more environmentally friendly, with lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to petrochemical-based plastics, although they may involve higher agricultural and energy demands during production. Furthermore, this review discusses sustainable packaging strategies and end-of-life management approaches, including composting, recycling, and anaerobic digestion, to support the transition toward a circular economy and sustainable future. Overall, biopolymer-based packages can be environmentally friendly if sustainable sources, efficient manufacturing processes, and proper disposal are used. The main barriers to the widespread use of biopolymers include their inadequate barrier performance, high costs, and lack of adequate recycling and composting facilities.
Rajul Jain, Nishant Singhal, Harsh Vardhan et al.· Frontiers in Sustainable Foo...· 0 citations
The increasing concern about food security, climatic changes, depletion of resources, and complex supply chains has created a need for advanced monitoring systems at all stages in the farm-to-table process. Conventional monitoring approaches lack the ability to detect pathogens, contaminants, pesticides, and other threats in terms of their speed, sensitivity, and real-time capabilities. The advancement of intelligent sensing devices, biosensors, Internet of Things (IoT) and AI has brought a new perspective to the process of continuous monitoring and evidence-based decision-making in agri-food systems. With the aid of such technologies, one can promptly recognize biological, chemical, environmental and quality factors while improving traceability and efficiency of operations. Current biosensors have demonstrated sensitivity in the nanogram (ng) to femtomolar (fm) level with response times of less than a minute. In contrast to previous studies which have analyzed these three elements of technology separately, this study incorporates all three into a single farm-to-table approach using peer-reviewed sources within the last 5 years. This paper examines the current trends related to intelligent sensors and AI-powered biosensing, data management architecture, and computing framework utilized within modern food production and supply chain management. In addition, it outlines key challenges associated with system integration, scalability, data management, regulatory compliance, and fair use of technologies. The reviewed studies highlight the potential benefits of integrating AI into intelligent sensing devices to increase the safety and sustainability of agri-food production.
Ashish Gaur, Nishant Singhal, Harsh Vardhan et al.· Frontiers in Sustainable Foo...· 0 citations
This work presents an interpretable machine learning (ML) system that uses composition- and physics-based descriptors to predict the bulk moduli of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) by permitting precise and computationally efficient bulk modulus prediction, as well as physically significant insights into descriptor–property connections.
