Protecting food packaging materials by natural nontoxic insect repellents

Materials such as polymers, paper or paperboard, textiles, and metal foils are all used in producing food-packaging materials. A major drawback of such packaging materials is that insect pests can penetrate them and infest the packaged food. To evaluate the efficiency of natural nontoxic insect repellents to protect food-packaging materials the repellency effect was determined on red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum adults. The efficacy of preventing the insects from boring holes into the treated liners was tested on adults of the lesser grain borer, Rhyzopertha dominica. The combined additive effects of both antifeedant and repelling components to prevent perforation choice and non-choice tests were carried out. Turmeric essential oils and several turmeric oil fractions have both repellency and antifeedant effects on tested storage insects. The solid residue of turmeric oleoresin has a strong antifeedant effect. It was also demonstrated that the integrated activity contributed by several compounds is responsible for the high activity of the essential oil and its fractions as a repellent and an antifeedant. The turmeric oleoresin and its components provide a versatile system to become integrated in and compatible with food packaging materials and, as a result, lead to very effective and diverse pest-impervious packaging materials. Because of diverse rhizome sources and extraction methods, there is a tremendous variation in composition of commercial turmeric essential oils and oleoresins. It should be emphasized that each commercial batch of turmeric oleoresin, essential oil, solid residue of turmeric oleoresin, or oil fraction for the production of pest-impervious packaging material should be carefully and comprehensively checked for its biological activity and its chemical composition. Appropriate patents were registered in the U.S., Europe and Israel. BioPack Ltd. has the rights to these patents and is in the process of implementing insect repellent solutions for standard packaging materials.