Quality changes of rainbow trout stored under different packaging conditions and mathematical modeling for predicting the shelf life

The quality changes of rainbow trout in common packaging (CP), vacuum packaging (VP) and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) were evaluated at different storage temperatures. The thiobarbituric acid (TBA), total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) and aerobic plate count (APC) of fillets were analyzed. The results showed that VP could greatly slow down the increase of TBA values of rainbow trout during storage, while the slowest increase of TVB-N values and the APC values of the fillets was observed in MAP. Regarding quality parameters exceeding the limit fastest, VP can better maintain the quality of rainbow trout. Furthermore, the experimental data was fitted well by the zero-order model or empirical exponential model except for the TBA value in VP. The models used for predicting the shelf life of rainbow trout in different packaging methods at the temperature in the range from 4 °C to 15 °C were obtained.