Citral-releasing active patches preserve the overall quality and extend strawberry shelf-life

Strawberries are known for their high perishability and susceptibility to rapid deterioration. Conventional packaging methods often fall short in extending the shelf-life of strawberries while preserving their desirable overall quality. This study explores a novel way to extend strawberry shelf-life by incorporating plastic-based patches embedded with citral, a natural substance present in citrus essential oils. The doses of active citral for patch application were tested in vitro and in vivo using antifungal assays against Botrytis cinerea. Two citral concentrations (0.08 and 0.16 µL/mL) were used to prepare the active patches which were, prior to storage, attached to the packages containing the strawberries. Afterward, the fruit was stored for 9 d at 4 °C, and quality evaluated throughout storage. Results showed that the active packaging with citral-embedded patches, regardless of the concentration, maintained the consumer acceptability level significantly higher than controls with strawberries, exhibiting nearly 3 additional days of shelf-life. Furthermore, active packaging effectively mitigated respiration rate, weight loss, and microbial growth, thus delaying senescence. Overall, this study shows that the developed packaging containing citral-patches presents a promising strategy to extend strawberry shelf-life.