Novel Nanocomposite Brought IPB Student “The Best Poster” Title in Malaysia

The commitment of engineers, scientists and technologists, to ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, preserving the environment and contributing to healthier people everywhere is integral to the evolution of the World’s society. Recognizing the importance to discuss these issues critically, the International Conference on Agricultural and Food Engineering (CAFEi 2018) was initiated in 2012 by Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and Department of Process and Food Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia. The aim of these biennial conferences is to provide a conducive platform to discuss and exchange relevant information, identifying new theoretical and practical approaches to address the tremendous challenges associated with agriculture and food engineering. Muhammad Sapoan, student from Department of Agroindustrial Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) has contributed his best by being granted as “The Best Student Poster” in Food Engineering category. Supervised by Dr Ade Iskandar, Dr Titi Candra Sunarti and Dr Farah Fahma, his work was entitled “Production of Antimicrobial Sachet with Silica-Nanocellulose Composite and Red Ginger Essential Oil as Natural Antimicrobial Agent”. The research background was motivated by the widely-growing popularity of active packaging as an effort to maintain food products storability, whose one of them is an antimicrobial sachet. Antimicrobial sachets effectiveness is very dependent on the release ability of antimicrobial substances from sachets. The objective of this study was to produce antimicrobial sachets with oil palm empty-fruit-bunch based silica-nanocellulose composite as matrix. As academia of department accredited by the prestigious accreditation of Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), Sapoan is aspired to utilize biomass-derived materials to fabricate products with more added-values. Competing with more than 50 papers from all around the World, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan China, Thailand, Nigeria, Vietnam, Egypt among others, Sapoan was the only student to be granted the award.