Shelf-life and colour change kinetics of Aloe vera gel powder under accelerated storage in three different packaging materials.

Aloe vera gel powder was produced through dehumidified air drying of Aloe vere gel at optimized conditions of temperature, relative humidity and air velocity of 64 °C, 18% and 0.8 m.s(-1), respectively. The powder was packed in three different packaging materials viz., laminated aluminum foil (AF), biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) and polypropylene (PP). The shelf-life of the powder was predicted on the basis of free flowness of product under accelerated storage condition (38 ± 1 °C, 90 ± 1% relative humidity) and was calculated to be 33.87, 42.58 and 51.05 days in BOPP, PP and AF, respectively. The storage stability of powder in terms of colour change was studied. The magnitude of colour change of Aloe vera gel powder during storage suggests that AF was better than BOPP and PP. The colour change of powder during storage followed first order reaction kinetics with a rate constant of 0.0444 per day for AF, 0.075 per day for BOPP and 0.0498 per day for PP.