Novel cadaverine non-invasive biosensor technology for the prediction of shelf life of modified atmosphere packed pork cutlets

Food waste in perishable products calls for the development of cost-efficient and real-time freshness and shelf life assessment tools. The current study evaluated a newly developed cadaverine biosensor for its ability to assess the sensory freshness stage and microbial quality of modified atmosphere packed (MAP) pork cutlets under a realistic supply chain scenario. The experiment compared the cadaverine levels measured by the biosensor to liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) cadaverine concentrations, and associated these to the shelf life estimation and freshness states determined by sensory and microbial evaluations during an 18-day storage period (5 °C). Results underlined the potential of cadaverine as a freshness biomarker as well as the applicability of the biosensor as a shelf life prediction tool. This is supported by the correlations obtained between sensory odour freshness evaluation and total viable counts with biosensor cadaverine levels for which the r obtained were 0.97 (<0.001) and 0.95 (<0.001), respectively.