Plant Toxins and Food Safety

Dear Colleagues,

Plant toxins and mycotoxins can cause serious threats to both humans and livestock. These toxins produced by plants and microorganisms can enter the food chain in several ways. Their presence in raw food as well as in a large panel of commodities (from cereals to fruit, baby food, honey, tomato juice, milk, meat, botanicals, and supplements) requires to obtain more information about their diffusion and risk assessment for consumers because some of these toxins are extremely potent and cause acute poisoning ranging from allergic reactions to death. Long-term health consequences include effects on the immune, reproductive, or nervous systems, as well as cancer. In particular, for plant toxins and mycotoxins, the European Commission issued new legislation and monitoring plans to delve deeper into this topic and ensure consumer health protection.

Plant toxins belong to a large number of chemical classes. Their production depends on several factors, and climate change also plays a crucial role. The most relevant plant toxins studied are tropane alkaloids, ergot alkaloids, hydrocyanic acid and cyanogenic glycosides, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, opium alkaloids, Δ9-THC, and cannabinoids, but other emerging compounds are known. This Special Issue aims to focus on the presence of plant toxins and mycotoxins in food, botanicals, herbs, and supplements. Manuscript contributions about this topic will include study cases regarding food and outbreak management; advanced/hyphenated test methods in food; monitoring activity and actions to prevent food contamination/intoxication outbreaks; risk assessment for consumers; and relationships between food contamination and climate change.

Dr. Pasquale Gallo
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2900 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.