Antimicrobial agents for food packaging applications

•Antimicrobial packaging is multifunctional by reducing harmful microbial activity in food.•Antimicrobial packaging helps to increase food safety.•Antimicrobial packaging reduces food wastage and improves food shelf life.•Bio-based antimicrobial agents in packaging provide extra safety for health.

Foods contamination leading to spoilage and growth of pathogenic microorganisms can happen when exposed to environment during slaughtering, processing, packaging and shipping. Although traditional food preservation methods such as drying, heating, freezing, fermentation and salting can extend food shelf-life, it is not consummate especially to inhibit the growth of pathogenic microorganisms that may endanger consumers' health. Antimicrobial packaging is a novel development that incorporates antimicrobial agent into polymer film to suppress the activities of targeted microorganisms. However, antimicrobial packaging is still an extremely challenging technology and there are only a few commercialized products found in the market. This review focuses on analyzing the antimicrobial agent development for the past decades till recent technology. The information about performance of antimicrobial packaging such as microbiology performance and physico-mechanical properties of the packaging film were discussed. It is expected such information would provide an overview as well as promote the development of antimicrobial packaging in the food related field and industry.