A comprehensive review of up-to-date strategies and future trends toward the engineered guar gum for packaging applications.

Guar gum (GG), a natural galactomannan polysaccharide derived from Cyamopsis tetragonoloba, is gaining popularity as a biodegradable and environmentally friendly packaging material. With the growing demand for sustainable food packaging, stricter regulations prioritize cost efficiency, consumer safety, and environmental impact. It exhibits strong potential for use in packaging films and coatings, offering barrier properties that slow down fruit ripening and reduce post-harvest quality loss. However, its direct use in sophisticated packaging systems is restricted by its inherent qualities, which include high hydrophilicity, low mechanical strength, and limited heat stability. Several modification techniques, such as chemical, physical, and enzymatic, are used to improve the performance properties of GG and are thoroughly examined in this paper. Its barrier, mechanical, and thermal characteristics are improved by crosslinking, graft copolymerization, combining with other biopolymers, and adding nano-reinforcements. The research also investigates advances in GG-based composite materials, structure-property connections, and food and non-food packaging applications. Because of their enhanced film-forming capabilities without appreciably raising production costs, modified GG-based films have become increasingly popular in academia and industry. It highlights recent advancements and summarizes current research on improved GG-based packaging materials. This study is an important tool for directing future advancements in designing sustainable packaging materials based on GG, as it identifies research gaps and summarizes recent achievements.