Advanced packaging technology for fresh fruit: from anti-damage and preservation to intelligent monitoring

Mechanical damage during postharvest circulation of fresh fruits remains a major obstacle limiting industry advancement. Effective packaging plays a vital role in mitigating mechanical injury, reducing spoilage, and extending shelf life. Although technologies are advancing, a systematic review is urgently needed to integrate recent progress in anti-damage, preservation, and intelligent packaging, and to support the development of more effective and sustainable packaging solutions. This paper summarises the damage-causing factors including mechanical damage, physical and chemical responses and environmental factors of fresh fruits. Focusing on the core challenges of packaging, we systematically review the research of anti-damage packaging (buffer material design, compressive structure optimisation and innovation research), fresh packaging (modified-air packaging, active packaging, slow-release technology and material innovation), and intelligent packaging (freshness indicator, radio frequency identification (RFID) temperature recording, traceable labels). Fresh fruit packaging is in a critical leap towards interdisciplinary integration and functional integration. Modern packaging technology has shown considerable effectiveness in a wide range of applications. Anti-damage packaging enables effective control of transport vibration, impact and compression stress. Preservation packaging can significantly extend the shelf life of fruit and improve the efficiency of nutritional value retention. Intelligent packaging has achieved real-time monitoring of the quality of fresh fruit status and dynamic feedback. This review highlights the transformative potential of packaging technologies for high quality development of the modern fruit supply chain and for promoting more sustainable and data-driven fruit packaging technologies. • Highlight interdisciplinary breakthroughs in anti-damage packaging technology. • Focus on functional integration innovations in preservation packaging. • Introduce dynamic feedback systems for intelligent monitoring. • Emphasize the sustainable development of eco-friendly packaging materials. • Propose future directions for multifunctional packaging systems.