State-of-the-art progress on locust bean gum polysaccharide for sustainable food packaging and drug delivery applications: A review with prospectives

Locust bean gum (LBG), a polysaccharide-based natural polymer, is being widely researched as an appropriate additive for various products, including food, gluten-free formulations, medicines, paper, textiles, oil well drilling, cosmetics, and medical uses. Drug delivery vehicles, packaging, batteries, and catalytic supports are all popular applications for biopolymer-based materials. This review discusses sustainable food packaging and drug delivery applications for LBG. Given the benefits of LBG polysaccharide as a source of dietary fiber, it is also being investigated as a potential treatment for many health disorders, including colorectal cancer, diabetes, and gastrointestinal difficulties. The flexibility of LBG polysaccharide allows it to form hydrogen bonds with water molecules, a crucial characteristic of biomaterials, and the film-forming properties of LBG are critical for food packaging applications. The extraction process of LBG plays an important role in properties such as viscosity and gel-forming properties. Moreover, there are multiple factors such as temperature, pressure, pH, etc. The LBG-based functional composite film is effective in improving the shelf life as well as monitoring the freshness of fruits, meat and other processed food. The LBG-based hydrogel is excellent carrier of drugs and can be used for slow and sustainable release of active components present in drugs. Thus, the primary goal of this review was to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the literature with a focus on the composition, properties, processing, food packaging, and medicine delivery applications of LBG polysaccharides. Thus, we investigated the chemical composition, extraction, and characteristics of LBG polysaccharides that underlie their applications in the food packaging and medicine delivery fields.