Application and Development of Intelligent Food Packaging in Food Freshness Monitoring

Intelligent food packaging, also referred to as smart packaging, has emerged as a promising solution for enhancing food safety, quality assurance, and supply chain transparency. By embedding sensing, indicating, recording, and communication functionalities into packaging systems, intelligent packaging enables real-time or near-real-time monitoring of environmental and intrinsic food conditions. This review summarizes the classification of intelligent packaging technologies by functional roles, sensing targets, and integration approaches. The fundamental detection principles, including colorimetric indication, electrochemical sensing, gas/volatile compound monitoring, biorecognition, and mass-sensitive detection, are discussed in detail. This paper also reviews the enabling manufacturing technologies such as printed electronics, microfluidics, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled communication modules. Advantages, including freshness monitoring, pathogen detection, traceability, and food waste reduction, are considered alongside challenges in stability, cost, scalability, regulatory compliance, and environmental sustainability. Representative applications in seafood spoilage detection and fruit and vegetable ripening monitoring demonstrate practical implementations and current challenges. The findings suggest that multimodal integration, advanced nanomaterials, machine learning algorithms, and sustainable design will drive future development toward large-scale adoption of intelligent food packaging systems.