Chitosan in Food and Packaging – What Really Matters for Function and Application
Chitosan is a versatile biopolymer that is gaining increasing importance in the food and packaging sectors. With its antimicrobial properties, biodegradability, and film-forming capacity, it offers sustainable solutions for shelf-life extension and plastic-free packaging. However, its effectiveness is not determined by degree of deacetylation (DDA) and molecular weight (MW) alone – rather, it results from a combination of chemical and physical characteristics that determine its suitability for different applications.