Estimation of shelf life for Ready-To-Eat sardines (RTE) using the Accelerated Shelf-Life Testing (ASLT) method

Ready-to-eat sardines (RTE) are ready-to-eat foods designed to satisfy the needs of people who don’t have time to cook. In order to maintain the quality of RTE products and have a longer shelf life, efforts should be made to maintain the quality of RTE products, one of which is the use of cold storage methods and packaging. The purpose of this study was to estimate the shelf life of RTE sardines using the accelerated method combined with the Arrhenius method. This study employs a completely randomised Design with two factors: packaging type (vacuum and non-vacuum packaging) and storage temperature (cold storage and freezing temperature). The parameters tested in this research include TPC (total plate count), organoleptic properties, fat content, and protein content. The estimated shelf life of ready-to-eat sardines (RTE) in this study shows that RTE fish has a shelf life of up to 558.96 days if stored at a freezing temperature and vacuum packed, and 313.29 days if stored at a refrigerated temperature and vacuum packed. While ready-to-eat sardines (RTE) have a shelf life if stored using pouch packaging of 514.83 days at freezing and 2945.13 days at refrigerated temperatures with the Arrhenius equation obtained, namely ln k = (13.436 – 3034.6) (1/T).