Technological watch
Kickstart: Holy guacamole, science is cool
You may have heard that leaving the pit in an avocado once it's cut open is a way to keep the flesh from turning brown. Now a study from Spanish research group Aimplas is asking: What if you used that pit in the packaging for guacamole to preserve it?
ITC Packaging and the Universidad de Alicante also are involved in the "Guacapack" project funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency that hopes to extend guacamole's shelf life by 15 percent while also using parts of the avocado that ordinarily go to waste. (The edible parts of an avocado make up a little more than half of the fruit, by weight.)
"Starch from the avocado seed will be extracted and purified to obtain a film that can be used to make multilayer IML labels that have oxygen barrier properties and prevent the oxidation of food," Aimplas said in an April 14 news release.
In addition, the avocado skin can go into bioplastics to injection mold the package.
I think I can safely say for every guac lover, this sounds like an awesome project.
ITC Packaging and the Universidad de Alicante also are involved in the "Guacapack" project funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency that hopes to extend guacamole's shelf life by 15 percent while also using parts of the avocado that ordinarily go to waste. (The edible parts of an avocado make up a little more than half of the fruit, by weight.)
"Starch from the avocado seed will be extracted and purified to obtain a film that can be used to make multilayer IML labels that have oxygen barrier properties and prevent the oxidation of food," Aimplas said in an April 14 news release.
In addition, the avocado skin can go into bioplastics to injection mold the package.
I think I can safely say for every guac lover, this sounds like an awesome project.
This project has received funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 837761.
