Innovative limonene and chitosan-based pads in improving shelf-life and preserving the volatile profile of fresh strawberries

Strawberries are extremely perishable fruit with a short shelf life due to its high susceptibility to mechanical injury, water loss, texture deterioration and microbiological decay, that rapidly reduces its marketability. The development of innovative and green strategies able to improve quality of strawberry is a current challenge. In this work, active adsorbent pads, consisted of a cellulose layer activated with either Chitosan (CH) or Limonene and Chitosan (CH-LO) solutions, were developed in order to preserve fresh strawberries. Results show that the strawberries stored at 8 °C in packaging containing CH or CH-LO coated-pads are marketable 3 d longer than controls. Furthermore, the CH pads allow for a reduction in respiratory activity and the mold counts. VOCs analysis carried out by HS-SPME/GC-MS revealed 123 compounds. PCA analysis, applied to the GC–MS dataset, to highlight cluster sampling, show that after 3 and 6 d of incubation, fruit stored with CH-LO are comparable to fresh strawberries. Although further experiments are needed to improve antimicrobial efficacy of the developed active pads, these results show a promising approach to preserve quality of strawberry during refrigerated storage.