Preservation Techniques to Increase the Shelf Life of Seafood Products: An Overview

Abstract

Currently, humanity is facing many types of diseases with various origins and the high costs of chemical drugs for treatment. Therefore, the consumption of healthy and nourishing foods such as seafood products to treat these diseases should be considered in the human diet. However, seafood products are subject to high spoilage owing to their high-water content, rich composition of unsaturated fatty acids, susceptibility to oxidation, near-neutral pH, presence of non-protein nitrogenous compounds, and microorganism activity. Therefore, appropriate storage methods are required to prevent spoilage. This review was done with the aim of providing preservation methods and increasing the shelf life of seafood products. In general, the results of this research stated that common and traditional techniques of seafood products preservation including salting, canning, chilling, freezing, fermentation, super chilling, drying, smoking, frying, pickling/marinating and pasteurization and also modern techniques for seafood products preservation such as microwave processing, ultrasound, pulsed electric field (PEF), irradiation, high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), micro fluidization, usage of natural preservatives (plants and algae extracts, biodegradable polymers, bioactive polysaccharides and biopeptides extracted from marine resources/ seafood by-products), packaging ((MAP), (AP), (IP), (VP), (RP)), nanotechnology and other new methods can preserve the product for a period of time efficiently, also significantly increase the desired sensory and organoleptic characteristics of the product and as a result, they increase quality, safety and shelf life. However, improving the weaknesses of traditional methods by using modern techniques can improve and maintain the nutritional value of the product.