A Decision Support System to design modified atmosphere packaging for fresh produce based on a bipolar flexible querying approach

Valérie Guillard, Patrice Buche, Sébastien Destercke, Nouredine Tamani, Madalina Croitoru, Luc Menut, Carole Guillaume, Nathalie Gontard
2015 Computers and Electronics in Agriculture  
18 To design new packaging for fresh food, stakeholders of the food 19 chain express their needs and requirements, according to some goals 20 and objectives. These requirements can be gathered into two groups: 21 (i) fresh food related characteristics and (ii) packaging intrinsic charac-22 teristics. Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is an efficient way to 23 delay senescence and spoilage and thus to extend the very short shelf 24 life of respiring products such as fresh fruits and
more » ... Conse-25 quently, packaging O 2 /CO 2 permeabilities must fit the requirements 26 of fresh fruits and vegetable as predicted by virtual MAP simulating 27 tools. Beyond gas permeabilities, the choice of a packaging material 28 for fresh produce includes numerous other factors such as the cost, 29 availability, potential contaminants of raw materials, process ability, 30 waste management constraints, etc. For instance, the user may have 31 the following multi-criteria query for his/her product asking for a pack-32 aging with optimal gas permeabilities that guarantee product quality 33 and optionally a transparent packaging material made from renew-34 able resources with a cost for raw material less than 3 e/ kg. To 35 help stakeholders taking a rational decision based on the expressed 36 needs, a new multi-criteria Decision Support System (DSS) for design-37 ing biodegradable packaging for fresh produce has been built. In this 38 paper we present the functional specification, the software architecture 39 and the implementation of the developed tool. This tool includes (i) 40 a MAP simulation module combining mass transfer models and respi-41 2 ration of the food, (ii) a multi-criteria flexible querying module which 42 handles imprecise, uncertain and missing data stored in the database. 43 We detail its operational functioning through a real life case study to 44 determine the most satisfactory materials for apricots packaging. 45 Keywords. MAP modeling, multi-criteria querying, decision support 46 system, knowledge engineering, respiring product. 47 using knowledge management system in order to provide a full (complete) 63 Decision Support System (DSS). 64 By providing suitable information, such numerical tools could help de-65 signers and users to select film properties that best fit particular purposes 66 and targets. This approach is especially important when developing packag-67 ing made from biodegradable materials, which becomes a new trend, as their 68 limited barrier properties, possibly optimized using smart and/or composite 69 multilayer material [Guillaume et al., 2010], can turn out to be an asset to 70 extend shelf life of respiring foods [Cagnon et al., 2012, Guilbert et al., 2011, 71 Guillaume et al., 2008]. To facilitate MAP design, mathematical models, so-72 called virtual MAP, have been developed by researchers working in this field 73 to design passive [Mahajan et al., 2007, Souza-Gallagher and Mahajan, 2013] 74 or active MAP [Cagnon et al., 2012, Charles et al., 2003, Charles et al., 2005] 75 for fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetable. Online applications are today 76 available for free (www.tailorpack.com) or charged access (www.packinmap.com). 77 Such numerical tools simplify the package design steps by predicting the gas 78 permeability values that permit to reach recommended atmosphere for the 79 target product and therefore to extend shelf life while maintaining quality 80 and safety of the packed food. 81 Up to now, all the aforementioned tools only considered the gas per-82 meabilities of the packaging material as a basis for packaging design. The 83 design of food packaging is not only driven by maximizing shelf life of the 84 food, and numerous other requirements may interplay for final decision, re-85 4 lated to processing, marketing, commercial, or distribution concerns (as cost, 86 process ability of constituents, industrial feasibility, environmental impact, 87 safety and stability of the packaging material all over the food life cycle, waste 88 109 imprecise) about packaging material characteristics (e.g. gas permeabilities, 110 cost, transparency, mechanical properties, etc.) and fresh food parameters 111 6 (e.g. respiration parameters, optimal storage conditions), (ii) allowing stake-112 holders to express their needs and requirements as queries addressed to the 113 system databases, and (iii) retrieving the packaging materials ranked from 114 7 157 9
doi:10.1016/j.compag.2014.12.010 fatcat:3af3ltu6lnfzbklxshmu33zhfm