Packaging Interventions in Low Temperature Preservation of Fish- A Review

Abstract

Consumers demand for fresh or fresh like fish products without altering its natural quality attributes will be met by using low temperature preservation particularly chilling. Low temperature preservation is widely practiced in the industry to overcome the spoilage of fish. However, low temperature alone has limited shelf-life which lead to the introduction of innovative packaging interventions ranging from high barrier packaging material to most recent active packaging technologies. Vacuum packaging (VP) and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) helped in reviving the fresh fish industry ads they helped in improving safety as well as shelf life considerably. The recent active packaging technologies especially O2 scavenger and CO2 emitters have additional advantage of very limited capital investment compared to VP and MAP technologies. Present article gives a brief of recent advancements of these packaging innovations for fish preservation under chilled or refrigerated storage condition.