Chemical, enzymatic or microbial activities from the surrounding environment and the food itself can cause spoilage to food products. In the meantime, the recent surge in world population, calls forfood products to be stored and delivered from one place to another place. During delivery, food products will start to deteriorate, losetheir appearance and decrease in nutritional values. Thus, the presence of food preservation methods such as heating, pickling, edible coating, drying, freezing and high-pressure processing can solve this problem by extending the food products" shelf life, stabilize their quality, maintaining their appearance and their taste. There are two categories of food preservations, the modern technology preservation method and the conventional preservation method. In the meantime, conventional food preservations usually use natural food preservatives. Meanwhile, the use of the synthetic preservative such as sulphites, benzoates, sorbates etc. for food preservation can cause certain health problems. In this light, replacing these synthetic preservatives with natural preservatives such as salt, vinegar, honey, etc. are much safer for human and environment. Furthermore, natural preservatives are easy to obtain since the sources are from plant, animal and microbes origin. This review paper focuses on preservation methodsand the natural preservatives that are suitable to be used for food preservation.

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Malaysia is among 12 countries in the world that rich in biodiversity including an assortment of plants with potential sources for new antimicrobial agents. Despite the fact that various plants have been screened, the requirement for detail study on antimicrobial compounds from plants is preceded as safer and better agent to inhibit growth of microbes. Therefore, selected Malaysia plants with medicinal properties are listed for further review in their antimicrobial activity and their major compound that act as antimicrobial agent. The major groups of the antimicrobial constituents are phenolics, phenolic acids, quinones, saponins, flavonoids, tannins, coumarins, terpenoids and alkaloids. These compounds are secondary metabolites that play the main role in plant defense mechanism. They also exhibited inhibitory effect on various microorganisms such as Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans. Compounds derived from Malaysian plants have the potential to be used as antimicrobial additive as most of their extracts containing active compounds such as caffeic acid, pyrogallol, catechin and curcumin. Extraction method of plants extract is done either by conventional method of maceration and extraction under reflux and steam distillation or modern method of microwave assisted extraction, supercritical fluid extraction and ultrasound-assisted solvent extraction. Even though plants extracts with medicinal properties are gaining fame for their antimicrobial properties, however the study on incorporation of the extracts into edible films as antimicrobial food packaging is limited. The advantages of using an edible film with antimicrobial agent plants for food products are it safe to use and it able to extend the shelf life while reducing packaging waste.

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