To celebrate the growth and development of the RSC Applied Polymers community and to highlight the remarkable authors who continue to contribute their high quality work to the journal we would like to share the opinions and insights of these authors through our blogs pages. This is the first post featuring our inaugural Emerging Investigators authors – a new forum we will use to celebrate the research of the rising stars in our applied polymer science community, as recommended by our Editorial Board and Advisory Board members. Read the 2025 Emerging Investigators collection here.
In this edition, we hear from Emerging Investigator Dr Garima Agrawal about their study entitled ‘Mussel-inspired biomimetic adhesive coatings for food preservation: a review’
An introduction to ‘Mussel-inspired biomimetic adhesive coatings for food preservation: a review’
Biodegradable polymer-based packaging materials have become an area of extensive interest in recent years because of the increasing demand of food safety for feeding the growing population with minimum environmental impact. Food can spoil at various stages from origin to consumption, including storage, transportation, and distribution. Various factors, including microbial growth and oxidation of food ingredients, can cause food spoilage. To address these issues, extensive research is being conducted on active packaging to extend the shelf life of food and meet the needs of a growing population.
Naturally existing mussel exhibits remarkable adhesion on a variety of surfaces facing shear stress caused by flowing water. This extraordinary adhesion is achieved by mussel foot protein containing dopamine having functional groups like catechol. Incorporation of mussel-inspired catechol and its derivatives in packaging materials helps in improving adhesion of the coating on food surface, while imparting antimicrobial, antioxidant, and UV blocking properties to materials. In the last decade, a plethora of articles dealing with different aspects of food packaging materials have been reported in the literature. Also, there has been a significant surge in efforts on exploring mussel-inspired catechol-based chemistry for biomedical applications. However, the utilization of this mussel-inspired chemistry in packaging sector is still in its nascent stage, and a detailed review on how its potential can be harnessed for developing adhesive coatings for improving the shelf-life of food products, is missing. Hence, in this contribution, we describe recent advancement in various aspects related to mussel-inspired adhesive coatings for food preservation.
Meet the Emerging Investigator
Garima Agrawal
Dr Garima Agrawal completed her M.Tech. in Polymer Science and Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, and received her PhD at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, in 2015. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ghent, Belgium, and later as a DST Inspire faculty at IIT Roorkee. In 2019, she joined as an Assistant Professor at the School of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India, where she is currently working as an Associate Professor. She is a recipient of NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award-2022, IIT Mandi Young Achiever’s Award-2023, and DST Inspire Faculty Award-2016. Her research interests are in the fields of functional polymers, nanomaterials, and biomaterials.
Meet the authors
Deepika Gupta
Deepika Gupta completed her B.Sc. from Maharshi Dayanand University, India, in 2019. She completed her M.Sc. in Chemistry at Jaipur National University, India, in 2021. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the School of Chemical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India. She is the recipient of DST-INSPIRE Fellowship. Her research focuses on the development of active food packaging materials.
Dimpy Bhardwaj
Dimpy Bhardwaj is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the School of Chemical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India. She received her M.Sc. in Chemistry at Aligarh Muslim University, India, in 2019 and completed her B.Sc. (Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics) from Chaudhary Charan Singh University, India, in 2017. She has qualified IIT JAM, CSIR NET-JRF, and GATE examinations. Her research focuses on the design and development of multifunctional polymeric biomaterials.
Ruchir Priyadarshi
Dr Ruchir Priyadarshi is an Assistant Professor at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. (2018) from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, in Biodegradable Food Packaging. He earlier served as a Brain Pool Fellow at Kyung Hee University (2019-2024), and Head of Biopolymer Innovations at Yash Papers Ltd., India (2018-2019), where he focused on developing sustainable and multifunctional food packaging solutions. His research interests include active food packaging, functional materials, sustainable materials, biodegradable polymers, and bionanocomposites. He was recently awarded as a Highly Cited Researcher (top 1% globally) in Agricultural Sciences (2024) by Clarivate Analytics.
Saurav Kumar
Saurav Kumar completed his B.Sc. in Biotechnology from Patna Science College in 2021. He received his M.Sc. in Biotechnology at Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), Thiruvananthapuram, India. Since 2024, he has been pursuing his Ph.D. at the School of Chemical Sciences, IIT Mandi. His research focuses on designing polymers/peptide-based biomaterials.
Mussel-inspired biomimetic adhesive coatings for food preservation: a review
Deepika Gupta, Dimpy Bhardwaj, Ruchir Priyadarshi, Saurav Kumar and Garima Agrawal
RSC Appl. Polym., 2025,3, 1145-1164. DOI: 10.1039/D5LP00173K
RSC Applied Polymers is a leading international journal for the application of polymers, including experimental and computational studies on both natural and synthetic systems. In this journal, you can discover cross-disciplinary scientific research that leverages polymeric materials in a range of applications. This includes high impact advances made possible with polymers across materials, biology, energy applications and beyond.