Modelling Modified Atmosphere Packaging for Fruits and Vegetables using Membrane Systems

As living materials, post-harvested fruits and vegetables continue their metabolic activity, exhibiting progressive biochemical changes. Optimisation of environmental conditions during storage of these fresh commodities is required in order to increase their shelf life. In this work we use P systems to abstract molecular interactions that occur between plant organ, film and surrounding atmosphere factors involved in fresh fruit and vegetable package designs. The proposed model constitutes a general framework to simulate the dynamical behaviour of these systems, specially due to gas exchanges and temperature fluctuations. Moreover, the model can be extended introducing other variables and processes that affect quality of such produces. This can be considered, to the best of our knowledge, the first contribution of Membrane Computing in Food Engineering.