2.10. Efficacy of the active packaging against B. cinerea
The ef fi cacy of the active packaging was carried out by agar
diffusion method, using potato dextrose agar, similar to the method
used to determine MIC (Section 2.2 above). The agar was poured
(around 20.0 mL) in Petri dishes of 9.0 cm diameter, at the centre of
which was placed a 1.0 cm agar disk containing a thin mycelium of
B. cinerea grown for 3 days at 25
C. Four disks cut from the extruded material were aseptically placed in the petri dish in such a
way that these were distributed around the agar as shown inFig. 1.
The Petri dish was incubated at 25
C for 5 days and the growth area
was observed. The assays were realized in triplicate and repeated
three times.
The radial extension growth of the mould was measured daily
and compared with the growth in control media. Radial inhibition
percentages of B. cinereawere calculated as:
% Radial Inhibition ¼ððX c X a
Þ= Xc Þ100 (4)
where X
c
is the mean radial growth of the mould in the control
media, andX
a
is the same parameter in the active packaging.