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The Unrevealed Value of Agro-Food Products and Their Impact on...
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The Unrevealed Value of Agro-Food Products and Their Impact on Human Health (3rd Edition)

A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Nutrition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 1389

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Domenico Iacopetta

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Pharmacy, Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Calabria, Via Pietro Bucci, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende, Italy
Interests: food; medicinal chemistry; bioactive products; nutraceuticals; phytochemicals; natural products extraction and isolation; antioxidants; anti-inflammatory; antimicrobials enzyme inhibition; cancer; cell biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, it is ascertained that a varied diet is strongly and universally recommended to maintain human health; thus, in-depth studies of sustainable and healthy foods have attracted many researchers. An essential concept bridged with the food system is the biodiversity of agriculture, including the species, gene, and ecosystem diversity. Furthermore, the even more refined knowledge regarding food science has catalogued healthy and “trash” food, the latter usually including low-cost and nutrient-poor foods that, coupled with sedentariness, may cause severe and chronic diseases. An innovative strategy to thwart these unpleasant consequences resides in the exploitation of agro-food products, which contain nutraceuticals or phytocomplexes with beneficial effects on human health. The daily consumption of these foods, or their extraction products or chemically modified nutraceuticals, is reputed to be very effective in maintaining human health and better preventing cancer and other chronic diseases. This Special Issue welcomes innovative studies and review papers that investigate several aspects of the agro-food valorisation, including all the agricultural chain steps, the biological evaluation of products and by-products, and their chemically modified components as preventive or curative against different diseases.

Kind regards,

Dr. Domenico Iacopetta
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.

Keywords

  • agro-food valorization
  • agro-food by-products
  • nutraceuticals and chemical modified compounds
  • autochthon or alimurgic plants
  • biological activity
  • human health and diseases

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

31 pages, 5359 KB  
Article
Rational Design and Virtual Screening of Antimicrobial Terpene-Based Leads from Marrubium vulgare Essential Oil: Structure-Based Optimization for Food Preservation and Safety Applications
by Ahmed Bayoudh, Nidhal Tarhouni, Raoudha Sadraoui, Bilel Hadrich, Alina Violeta Ursu, Guillaume Pierre, Pascal Dubessay, Philippe Michaud and Imen Kallel
Foods 2026, 15(3), 541; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods15030541 - 4 Feb 2026
Viewed by 816
Abstract
Pseudomonas aeruginosa elastase LasB accelerates refrigerated food spoilage through proteolytic degradation of muscle and milk proteins. While Marrubium vulgare essential oil terpenes exhibit antimicrobial activity, their weak potency and nonspecificity limit direct food preservation applications. This computational study aimed to rationally redesign terpene [...] Read more.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa elastase LasB accelerates refrigerated food spoilage through proteolytic degradation of muscle and milk proteins. While Marrubium vulgare essential oil terpenes exhibit antimicrobial activity, their weak potency and nonspecificity limit direct food preservation applications. This computational study aimed to rationally redesign terpene scaffolds into predicted selective LasB inhibitors. A virtual library of 635 terpene–peptide–phosphinic acid hybrids (expanded to 3940 conformers) was evaluated using consensus molecular docking (Glide/Flare) against LasB (PDB: 3DBK) and three human off-target proteases. Top candidates underwent duplicate 150 ns molecular dynamics simulations with MM/GBSA binding free-energy calculations. Computational screening identified thymol–Leu–Trp–phosphinic acid as the lead candidate with predicted binding affinity of −12.12 kcal/mol, comparable to reference inhibitor phosphoramidon (−11.87 kcal/mol), and predicted selectivity index of +0.12 kcal/mol representing a 2.3 kcal/mol advantage over human proteases. Molecular dynamics simulations indicated exceptional stability (98.7% stable frames, 0.12 Å inter-replica RMSD) with consistent zinc coordination. Structure–activity analysis revealed phosphinic zinc-binding groups (+1.57 kcal/mol), Leu–Trp linkers (+2.47 kcal/mol), and phenolic scaffolds (+1.35 kcal/mol) as predicted optimal structural features. This in silico study provides a computational framework and prioritized candidate set for developing natural product-derived food preservatives. All findings represent computational predictions requiring experimental validation through enzymatic assays, food model studies, and toxicological evaluation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Unrevealed Value of Agro-Food Products and Their Impact on Human Health (3rd Edition))
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