Recent advances in food processing and packaging technology

Abstract

As the economies of many countries are increasing, the consumers have started using processed food more than the staples. As a matter of fact global food processing and packaging business has reached to multi trillion dollars. It was reported that approximately, 16 million people work in the food industry. Recent advances in food processing and packaging is not just to meet the productivity demands but to adopt sophisticated automation, control and monitoring methods and techniques. This paper reviews aspects of food processing and packaging methods and techniques. The intention of including this paper in this journal was that significant amount of processing and packaging research and developments involve study of automation, control and monitoring. This paper, therefore, besides describing various stages of food processing, provides a detail review on many subtopics including recent advances in smart packaging techniques, the role of nanotechnology in packaging, various types of packaging machineries including the application of robotics, package printing techniques, conventional automation and control tools, Open, Modular Architecture Control (OMAC) guidelines on automation and control including further references, the importance of treatability attribute, paradigm shift with regard to the use of fieldbus-based automation scenarios and some evidences and last but not the least the current research directions in the field of Food Processing and Packaging Technology (FPPT).