A study on the effect of anthocyanin pigment from purple cabbage for food packaging

In developing countries, food spoilage and increase in pollution of solid waste, especially from food packaging. Basically, this problem not only affect the damaging to human being, but also towards environment. Extraction process is used for extracting the desired compound from its natural source, as materials in food packaging technology. Purple cabbage that contain high amount of anthocyanin can be utilized in food packaging production as it bring unlimited number of economic and environmental benefits to the industrial of food. The purposes of this research is to extract anthocyanin pigment from purple cabbage and to study the effect of anthocyanin in food packaging towards storage condition, food product and mechanical properties. Two different type of solvents were used to compare the amount of anthocyanin extract which is distilled water and distilled water-ethanol. The peak for anthocyanin in Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) from distilled water-ethanol solvent is at 1217.25cm-1. This peak is higher compared to the solvent that used distilled water only. From UV-vis region spectra, both food packaging that contain purple cabbage extract were incorporated into agar and starch films. Based on the effect on food sample, pH indicator film showed the highest colour changes which is from purple to pink when there is a presence of ethanol in the solvent. For the effect of storage temperature, food packaging in temperature 60°C become dried and brittle while food packaging in temperature 4°C still fresh. In term of mechanical properties, the elasticity of film that contain anthocyanin using distilled water-ethanol as solvent is decrease from 0.2813 MPa in day 1 to 0.0341 MPa in day 15 while the elasticity of film that contain anthocyanin using distilled water only as solvent also decrease from 0.4625 MPa in day 1 to 0.0313 MPa in day 15. Overall, pH indicator films that contain anthocyanin from purple cabbage extract has high potential to be used as one of the material in food packaging in order to detect food spoilage since they have reliable response to pH and temperature.