<![CDATA[Grapes are perishable fruits susceptible to damage during transportation and storage post-harvesting, due to moisture loss, microbial contamination, oxidative damage, and physical degradation. These problems lead to weight loss, reduced shelf life, and deterioration of appearance, which can be overcome by using edible coating for preserving post-harvest fruits due to simplicity, non-toxicity, and cost-effectiveness. Starch is an excellent material for edible coating, with cassava peel serving as a suitable source because of good film-forming ability, biodegradability, and non-toxicity. Cassava peel starch also has the capacity to form a semi-permeable barrier that can reduce moisture and gas exchange for edible coating. However, starch is less resistant to pathogenic microbes, showing the need to incorporate limonene essential oil (EO) extracted from sweet orange peel with good antibacterial properties. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the most effective formulation of cassava peel starch and sweet orange EO in edible coating. Analysis was also carried out to evaluate the effect of coating on the quality of grapes based on weight loss, pH, antibacterial properties, and fruit organoleptic. The experiment was conducted by coating grapes using dip method and analyzed during 7 days of storage. Starch was successfully extracted from cassava peel with a facile method to obtain yield of 52.02%. The results showed that the most effective formulation of starch and EO in edible coating was 5% and 0.1%, respectively, indicating potential to significantly maintain the quality of grapes. The addition of orange peel-based EO also inhibited microbial growth during storage. At this formulation, grapes coated with EO-starch film showed an average weight loss of 5.94% and pH 4.21, with lower total microbes of 1.39x10 3 CFU/gram. This indicated that edible coating enriched limonene EO was effective in preserving grape quality and prolonging shelf life.]]>
