Postbiotics from Fermented Plant Extracts: Chemistry, Functionality, and Food Applications
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutraceuticals, Functional Foods, and Novel Foods".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 May 2026 | Viewed by 6
Special Issue Editors
Interests: applied chemistry; chemistry of natural products; food chemistry; biologically active compounds; free radicals; antioxidants; encapsulation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: polyphenols; in vitro digestion; bioavailability; anti-inflammatory activity; antihyperglycemic activity; bioactive compounds; natural pigments; antioxidant activity; food; antioxidants
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The growing demand for functional foods has stimulated increasing interest in the fermentation of plant-based extracts as an effective approach to enhance nutritional and technological properties of food products. During fermentation, herbal, fruit, and vegetable extracts undergo complex microbial transformations that generate postbiotics. These include non-viable microbial cells, cell wall fragments, and a wide range of fermentation-derived metabolites with proven functional roles in foods.
Postbiotics such as bioactive peptides, phenolic derivatives, organic acids, exopolysaccharides, and volatile compounds provide numerous benefits in food systems, including enhanced microbial safety, oxidative stability, and sensory quality. Moreover, postbiotics exhibit antioxidant, antimicrobial, immunomodulatory, and metabolic health effects while maintaining activity after processing or storage, ensuring consistent performance and safety in food matrices.
Fermented plant extracts represent particularly promising sources of postbiotics for use in functional foods and beverages, offering opportunities for natural preservation, clean-label development, and next-generation plant-based formulations. However, further understanding of their chemical complexity, structure–function relationships, mechanisms of action, and safety assessment within food systems is needed.
For this Special Issue, we welcome original research articles, reviews, and short communications on the chemistry, bioactivity, and technological applications of postbiotics derived from plant fermentation, as well as studies addressing regulatory perspectives, safety evaluation, consumer perception, and their integration into sustainable food systems.
Dr. Vanja Travičić
Dr. Gordana Ćetković
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
- postbiotics
- fermentation
- fermented plant-based extracts
- bioactive compounds
- functional foods
- antioxidant activity
- microbial safety
- clean-label formulation
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