Effects of different logistics packaging methods on the quality and microbial variation of bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus)

Bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) is one of the most economically valuable ocean fish species. However, it is susceptible to corruption during storage and transportation, and maintaining a healthy environment during the transportation is critical to preventing quality deterioration. The influence of packaging on freshness retaining in transportation engineering have been the focus of very little research. As a result, the current study investigated the impact of different transportation packaging on the quality and microbiological diversity and variation of bigeye tuna during the logistics process. The results showed that the aluminum foil paper (AFP) group had minimum temperature fluctuation during transportation and possessed preferable water retaining capacity and color protection effect. AFP transport packaging efficiently prevented the creation of total volatile basic nitrogen content (TVB-N) and the microbial growth. After 40 h, the TVB-N was 21.28 mg/100 g and the microbial total plate count was 3.53 log10 CFU/g, both of which were within the acceptable range. Temperature fluctuations and packaging materials used during transportation had a major effect on the microbial community structure of bigeye tuna, the AFP group had Chitinophagaceae, Acinetobacter and Knoellia as the dominant bacteria, while the expanded polystyrene foam (EPSF) and European logistics (EUL) groups had Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter and Macrococcus as the dominant bacteria. The AFP box transport packaging, on the other hand, was found to decrease the growth and reproduction of Pseudomonas to a certain extent. Overall, AFP packaging may effectively restrain the growth of microorganisms spoiling the freshness and preserve the quality of bigeye tuna.