Thymol-doped antibacterial coatings for food active packaging

Thymol can be easily derived from plants (thyme and oregano) and is a FDA approved food additive commercially available at low price. It has been recognized to have antibacterial and antioxidant properties, and is registered in the list of flavourings that do not present risks to the health of the consumers. This interesting properties can in principle be exploited also to prepare functional coatings, which in turn can be applied to packaging materials to obtain antibacterial and antifungi packagings. This study is devoted to investigate the possibility to prepare thymol-doped antibacterial coatings. For this purpose, thymol has been dissolved in different amounts into a liquid photo-crosslinkable diacrylic resin and the antibacterial activity has been evaluated against gram-positive and gram-negative bacterias by qualitative modified agar diffusion assays. The rate of diffusion of thymol from the doped-resins have been performed with different liquid simulating fat (n-hexane), acqueous (water) and intermediate polarity (MeOH, Ethyl Acetate and EtOH) media.