Fermentation and Circular Economy in Food Sustainability

A special issue of Fermentation (ISSN 2311-5637). This special issue belongs to the section "Fermentation for Food and Beverages".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 1451

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Singapore City, Singapore
Interests: food waste valorization for the production of sustainable food packaging; novel food polymers; food ingredients; antimicrobial compounds
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Food Science, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China
Interests: fermentation; food biotechnology; food waste; green biomanufacturing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the topic of food sustainability has been shown to be an increasing area of research interest. In the food production system, a large amount of food is being wasted or lost in the supply chain. This Special Issue focuses on emerging innovations and technologies to help improve, but is not limited to, reducing food waste, increasing yield, and ensuring food safety. These strategies include the use of techniques such as fermentation or green synthesis to produce lower-cost food ingredients, novel food ingredients, and novel food packaging, as well as sensors to help the industry develop a circular economy system. Studies that also investigate novel food coatings for use on farms and post-harvest agricultural produce will also fall within the scope of this issue.

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Dr. Jaslyn Jie Lin Lee
Dr. Xiaomei Lyu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fermentation is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • food waste
  • packaging
  • coating
  • fermentation
  • sustainability
  • valorisation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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29 pages, 3284 KB  
Systematic Review
From Tea Fermentation to New Technologies: Multisectoral Applications of Kombucha SCOBY Through the Lens of Methodi Ordinatio
by Nicole de M. Vianna, Gabriel Albagli, Adejanildo da S. Pereira and Priscilla F. F. Amaral
Fermentation 2025, 11(10), 589; https://doi.org/10.3390/fermentation11100589 - 14 Oct 2025
Viewed by 1311
Abstract
The Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY) is a cellulose-based biofilm resulting from the fermentation of sweetened tea by a microbial consortium of acetic acid bacteria and yeasts. This study applies the Methodi Ordinatio technique to systematically identify, rank, and analyze the [...] Read more.
The Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY) is a cellulose-based biofilm resulting from the fermentation of sweetened tea by a microbial consortium of acetic acid bacteria and yeasts. This study applies the Methodi Ordinatio technique to systematically identify, rank, and analyze the most relevant scientific publications on the applications of SCOBY. A comprehensive search in SCOPUS and Web of Science yielded 179 articles, after manual filtration. The InOrdinatio index, which combines citation count, publication year, and journal impact factor, was used for ranking to select a representative sample of the most important contributions (117 articles). The highest-ranked article scored 128.9, and the lowest 42.6. China led in scientific output (14.01%), followed by India (11.46%), the UK and USA (5.10% each), and Brazil (4.46%). The International Journal of Biological Macromolecules was the most frequently used journal for publications in this field. “Bacterial cellulose” was the most cited keyword (61 times), followed by “kombucha” (41) and “fermentation” (29). A consistent rise in publications has been observed over the past five years. Four main application areas were identified: bacterial cellulose (BC) (38%), biosustainable materials (28%), biomedical (17%), and food-related uses (17%). Most of the studies related to BC production (52%) searched for alternative substrates, and 18% focused on the isolation and identification of the most productive microorganisms within SCOBY. For biomedical applications, a unifying theme is the development of SCOBY-based materials with intrinsic antibacterial properties. These findings emphasize SCOBY’s emerging role in sustainable innovation and circular economic frameworks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fermentation and Circular Economy in Food Sustainability)
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