The preparation, resources, applications, and future trends of nanofibers in active food packaging: a review

AbstractAbstractActive packaging is a novel strategy for maintaining the shelf life of products and ensuring their safety, freshness, and integrity that has emerged with the consumer demand for safer, healthier, and higher quality food. Nanofibers have received a lot of attention for the application in active food packaging due to their high specific surface area, high porosity, and high loading capacity of active substances. Three common methods (electrospinning, solution blow spinning, and centrifugal spinning) for the preparation of nanofibers in active food packaging and their influencing parameters are presented, and advantages and disadvantages between these methods are compared. The main natural and synthetic polymeric substrate materials for the nanofiber preparation are discussed; and the application of nanofibers in active packaging is elaborated. The current limitations and future trends are also discussed. There have been many studies on the preparation of nanofibers using substrate materials from different sources for active food packaging. However, most of these studies are still in the laboratory research stage. Solving the issues of preparation efficiency and cost of nanofibers is the key to their application in commercial food packaging.HIGHLIGHTSElectrospinning is the most used method to produce nanofibers for food packagingSolution blow and centrifugal spinning are novel for large-scale nanofiber productionA variety of natural and synthetic polymers have been used for nanofiber productionProgress has been made in the development of antimicrobial and antioxidant nanofibersEthylene removal and moisture removal nanofibers have been successfully producedGraphical abstractKeywords: Nanofiberactive food packagingelectrospinningsolution blow spinningcentrifugal spinning Disclosure statementThe authors report there are no competing interests to declare.Ethical approvalThis article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.Additional informationFundingThis research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFD2100100), Zhejiang Provincial Cooperative Extension Project of Agricultural Key Technology (2022XTTGGP01), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2021FZZX001-55).