Traceability and Control in Production and Quality of Value-Added Agricultural and Food Products

Dear Colleagues,

Traceability is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 22005:2007 ) as the “ability to follow the movement of a feed or food through specified stage(s) of production, processing and distribution”, involving the trace of the flow of materials (feed, food, their ingredients, and packaging) and the necessary identification for each stage of production, from the seed and the plant propagation to the transformed products such as flour, sourdough, pasta, bread, wine, cider, etc. Additionally, quality schemes aim at protecting specific products and names with unique characteristics frequently linked to their geographical origin as well as traditional know-how.

Geographical indications consist of Protected Designation of Origin, Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), and Geographical Indication (GI), which safeguard the product names that originate from specific regions and have specific qualities or enjoy a reputation linked to the production territory. All of these depend on the traceability of the production from land to table.

This Special Issue will focus on “Traceability and Control in the Production and Quality of Value-Added Agricultural and Food Products”. We welcome novel research articles, reviews, and opinion pieces covering all related topics including new approaches to control food quality, quality schemes, cultivar identity, seed and plant production, food products, intellectual property rights, techniques for traceability, statistics, policies, and case studies from the land to the table.

Traceability is linked to numerous research activities and methodologies. Therefore, we aim to publish original research articles and reviews that improve our understanding of the processes and controls in the production and transformation of value-added agricultural and food products, particularly manuscripts that address the following topics:

1. Evaluation of phenotypic traits of crops, those related to quantitative and qualitative traits, as well as the statistics applied to diversity descriptors related to the quality of food and agricultural products.
2. Methodologies used in the evaluation of traceability of the flow of food production, from land to table.
3. Statistics used in the evaluation of the quality of the traits and the production schemes.
4. Regulations and policies related to protection of the quality of the names and the products, including cultivars, certification, Protected Designation of Origin, Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), and Geographical Indication (GI), and the ethnographic values associated with traditional food products.
5. Finally, case studies on the quality of value-added agricultural and food products.

We invite our colleagues to submit contributions describing their advances that will surely improve the knowledge of traceability and control in the agricultural production for food quality.

Prof. Dr. Santiago Pereira-Lorenzo
Dr. Ana Ramos Cabrer
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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