Starch/Pectin as Emerging Renewable Materials for Fabrication of Sustainable Bioplastics for Food Packaging Applications

Abstract Currently, due to serious environmental concerns of using non-biodegradable fossil fuel based plastics for food packaging application, the renewable bioplastic obtained from second generation biobased materials (biopolymers & plasticizers) could be an attractive alternative, but fulfilling the consumers demand is a challenging task. Here in this work, starch/pectin as matrix and chitosan co-biopolymers together with tartaric acid (TA)/citric acid (CA) as natural plasticizers were used to fabricate their bioplastics by condensation polymerization accompanied by intermolecular hydrogen bonding interactions. The FTIR analysis confirmed the successful formation of amide/ester bonds and non-covalent hydrogen bonding interactions, while the broad XRD bands indicated the amorphous nature of all the obtained bioplastics. Their swelling ratio ranged between (510–620 ± 50%) and the mass loss (44–76 ± 5%), which was susceptible to acid facilitated hydrolysis for 24 h incubation in water. The obtained tensile modulus was in the range (0.5 ± 0.1 to 7.5 ± 0.5 MPa), which was highest for starch/TA film (7.5 ± 0.5 MPa), attributed to the more plasticization effect in the CA based films. All the samples showed complete degradation (97 ± 2.5%), after 3 days dipping in soil and were ecofriendly by ecotoxicity assay. Therefore, these pure biobased bioplastics could be useful materials for the future food packing industry.