A 3 year post-doctoral position on development of active packaging for Mediterranean food product

main mission:

The Mediterranean region is one of the most impacted area by food loss and waste, plastic pollution and climate change. To avoid these environmental issues, it is therefore essential to develop sustainable packaging. For that, one possibility is to introduce natural molecules with antimicrobial activity or microbiomes into the packaging, allowing to decrease bacterial contamination and consequently food loss and waste. This development of sustainable packaging can be reinforced by the use of freshness indicators or, more generally, intelligent packaging in order to control the safety of the food. The Intactbiopack project aims to develop and promote in the Mediterranean region the use of the following packaging solutions: (1) low-cost, biodegradable and compostable antimicrobial packaging reducing food losses and waste in the food chain and at consumer stage (2) packaging containing living microorganisms and probiotics (microbiomes) to help consumers to develop fermented products from leftovers (3) intelligent packaging, based on RFID or colorimetric solutions to give information about the freshness of an uneaten product to consummers and/or to control the fermentation of leftovers (4) to ensure the environmental and socio-economic benefits of all these packaging solutions on targeted case studies. In this context, the post-doctoral researcher will work on the development of active packaging thanks to the addition of natural antimicrobial compounds and/or microbiomes.

activities: The activities will be divided in two parts:

(1) Project management (10 to 20% of the time): organization of the kick-off meeting that will take place in June, as well as all the following meetings (approximately one per month with the different partners through visio and one per year in face-to-face).

(2) The scientific project (80 to 90% of the time): the aim is to participate in the development of active packaging. Firstly, it will be necessary to propose, test and characterize different encapsulation strategies for active molecules and microbiomes (nano-emulsions, beta-cyclodextrin etc). Secondly, the most functional strategies will then be integrated into PHBV material by thermopressing or coating. Finally, the produced materials will be characterized in terms of mechanical, transfers and antimicrobial properties.