Abstract
Health benefit of fresh fruit and vegetables remains hampered by their very short shelf life due to their high perishability responsible of considerable food waste and losses and consequently high environmental impact. Among innovative technologies, Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) aims to maintain, in the close surrounding of the product, an atmosphere composition that prevents its decay. Existing models of mass transfers in the food/packaging system predict the evolution of gas concentrations (O2 and CO2) in MAP but without any estimation of food shelf life gain. A large part of food wastage is related to product's short shelf life, shelf life prediction is thus an indispensable prerequisite for quantifying the benefit of MAP on the reduction of food losses and the impact of these losses on our environment. In this context, the objective of this work is to propose an innovative approach to predict the gain of shelf life due to MAP and its positive effect on the reduction of food losses and environmental impact. MAP modelling tools simulating O2 and CO2 transfer were coupled to a food deterioration model. This latter predicts shelf life gain of fresh produce using MAP in realistic storage conditions. The model was validated on strawberries of the variety “Charlotte”. A range of shelf life gain from 0.33 days in commercial MAP to 2.76 days in optimized MAP could be achieved compared to the conventional storage. This model was then used to predict a percentage of food losses at the consumer stage. To do this, a hypothesis was set assuming that food losses are proportional to the level of product deterioration. It was found that, if MAP packaging is established all along the postharvest chain and consumer are informed of the benefit of MAP, losses reduction may reach 40% in commercial MAP compared to macro-perforated packaging. These losses reduction leads to limited reduction of the environmental impact in commercial MAP as confirmed by LCA because they represent one small portion of the losses generated in the post-harvest chain, those linked to product deterioration. However, in optimized MAP, 20% of environmental impact reduction is recorded compared to current packaging.