Advances and Challenges in Plant Food Drying Methods
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Foods".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 271
Special Issue Editors
Interests: food chemistry; food quality; food processing and engineering; food and nutrition; food safety; food preservation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: food processing; fruit and vegetable dehydration; food chemistry; shelf life
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Reducing food waste is crucial for the environment and the economy, and a common key method for this purpose is drying, which extends the shelf life of food and preserves its quality, while mitigating distribution and storage costs. Given that plant-based food contains an abundance of valuable bioactive substances, vitamins, and antioxidants, one of the most important tasks of drying is achieving their retention and optimizing process conditions to prevent the degradation of heat-sensitive nutrients. Consequently, recent trends have been directed towards advances in existing thermal drying methods and the development of non-thermal as well as hybrid methods, which yield innovative dried products with improved nutritional and sensory properties. Sustainability concerns, the tendency for more circular and eco-friendly strategies, and minimizing energy consumption pose additional challenges in the field of plant food drying.
The aim of this Special Issue is to present the latest findings on advances in plant food drying, with a particular focus on economic, energy, or environmental aspects of drying efficiency. Original studies and review papers investigating drying optimization methods, strategies for reducing energy and resource consumption, and the evaluation of sustainable approaches in the drying process, with an emphasis on improving the quality of dried plant products, are welcome.
Dr. Milica Nićetin
Dr. Nemanja Miletic
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. 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
- plant-based food
- drying methods
- nutritive quality
- sensory properties
- sustainable practices
- environmental aspects
- energy efficiency
- cost-effective drying
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