Chitosan, a versatile natural polymer is an amino polysaccharide prepared by processing shrimp shell waste which involved deacetylation of chitin. To obtain high degree of deacetylation (DDA), several parameters should be performed during alkaline treatment. The present study was undertaken at different time of soaking treatment (once and twice) and temperature (60 o C and 80 o C) to optimize the deacetylation process to produce chitosan with high solubility and degree of deacetylation. It was observed that the highest solubility and degree of deacetylation were obtained when deacetylation process was repeated twice and temperature of 80 o C, with 99.48% and 97.63%, respectively. It can be concluded that by repeating the deacetylation twice with the support of heating treatment, a better quality of chitosan with higher solubility and degree of deacetylation can be produced.

Chitosan, a biopolymer that consist of various properties, has multiple applications throughout industries where one of the promising applicarion of chitosan is its preservative effect. Chitosan, a bioactive natural edible coat can be considered a promising alternative to overcome the freshness of bananas during storage. Throughout this study, observations were made on weight loss, peel colour changes and titratable acidity for the effect of chitosan coating. In terms of weight loss, among four different concentration of chitosan coating solution, the 2.0% chitosan coating solution showed the lowest weight loss percentage which is 22.6% compare to others which were 1.0% (26.00%), 0.5% (26.20%) and 1.5% (34.24%) significantly. The result marked variations between the uncoated banana and coated banana at different concentrations of chitosan coating solution (ASC) which are 0.50, 1.00, 1.50 and 2.00%. The peel color changes were significantly different during the first and final day of observation for each concentration. A significant variation was observed for the titratable acidity of the banana fruit where the lowest value obtained was 0.812% during coating with 2.0% chitosan coating solution while the highest titratable acidity was observed during the coating with 1.5% chitosan solution which is 2.11%. To summarize, banana coating with chitosan can decreased the weight loss of the banana fruit as well as improve the peel color changes during 12 days of storage. Besides that, banana coating with chitosan can also lower the value of titratable acidity of the banana fruit compared to uncoated bananas.