Edible films from chitosan-gelatin: Physical properties and food packaging application

Environmental pollution problems caused by plastic-based packaging promote alternative sustainable solutions to be imminent. Chitosan and gelatin are attracting great attentions in food packaging applications and representing interesting biomaterials for developing edible packaging film due to their excellent inherent properties including degradability, edibility, film-forming property and compatible nature. With the development of technology and economy, food-grade chitosan and food-grade gelatin are emerging and produced under legislation or standards proposed by the government or organization. These chitosan and gelatin could form uniform film-forming solutions and fabricate edible films by strategies including casting, electrospinning and thermoplastic method. The emerging chitosan-gelatin composite films with excellent physical properties including mechanical property, surface hydrophobic property, color property, barrier property and thermal property have achieved great developments. This article comprehensively reviews recent advances in legislation of raw materials, fabrication strategies and physical properties of chitosan-gelatin based edible films.