Artificial Intelligence and Gas-Sensing in Smart Packaging: Ensuring Safety, Quality, and Sustainability of Chilled Foods Applications

Ensuring the safety and shelf life of chilled foods remains a critical challenge in modern supply chains. Conventional packaging provides passive protection but cannot monitor real-time freshness or microbial activity. Smart packaging systems integrating gas sensing with artificial intelligence (AI) offer a promising solution by enabling continuous detection of spoilage-related volatile compounds such as carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, and ethylene. This review summarizes recent advances in gas-sensing technologies including electrochemical, metal-oxide semiconductor, optical, and nanomaterial-based sensors and their application in chilled food monitoring. The integration of AI improves pattern recognition, spoilage prediction, and shelf-life estimation, particularly when combined with multi-sensor arrays. Current challenges include sensor stability under cold and humid conditions, device miniaturization, data standardization, and secure digital infrastructure. Future developments are expected to focus on low-cost biodegradable sensing platforms, edge-AI-enabled decision-making, and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity for real-time monitoring. Overall, AI-assisted gas-sensing smart packaging represents a promising approach to enhance chilled food safety, reduce waste, and support sustainable supply chains.