Sustainable Agro-Food Production and Its Relation to Health-Promoting Compounds
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Security and Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 1260
Special Issue Editors
Interests: healthier beverages enriched with bioactive compounds; polyphenols and their impact on human health; plant-based drinks; metabolic health benefits; sugar alternatives; functional properties; functional beverages
Interests: bioactive compounds; by-products revalorization; elicitation strategies; nutrition; emission reduction; local food production; health promotion
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to invite you to submit a review or research paper to the upcoming Special Issue “Sustainable Agro-Food Production and Its Relation to Health-Promoting Compounds” in Foods.
Sustainable agro-food production is essential to addressing global challenges related to environmental impact, food security, and human health. Climatic change, characterized by prolonged drought and extreme temperature fluctuations, critically affects crop production. Moreover, global population growth is another critical issue, and requires higher food production. This, combined with the low productivity of some conventional farming systems, creates an urgent need for innovative solutions to enhance crop yield while minimizing the depletion of natural resources, especially water and soil. Additionally, food loss throughout the production chain is a major concern, as a substantial proportion of food is wasted. In this regard, extending shelf life and revalorizing agro-industrial by-products are becoming increasingly relevant strategies.
Furthermore, there is a growing awareness of the relationship between diet and the incidence of non-communicable diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, and neurodegenerative conditions. In this sense, bioactive compounds, such as (poly)phenols, glucosinolates, or carotenoids, present in plant-based foods play a key role in the prevention of these disorders. This has increased the consumer demand for higher-quality, health-promoting foods rich in these compounds.
To address these challenges, it is necessary to explore sustainable agricultural alternatives that optimize resource use and reduce food waste, promoting lower water consumption by optimizing irrigation and reducing dependence on irregular rainfall, while simultaneously enhancing crop yield and bioactive compound content. Approaches such as controlled-environment agriculture and elicitation techniques offer promising solutions to achieve these goals. Additionally, reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production and distribution is a crucial step toward sustainability. Agricultural systems located closer to consumer centers, such as urban and vertical farms, help reduce long-distance transportation, decreasing fossil fuel consumption and, consequently, carbon emissions.
This Special Issue focuses on the study of sustainable agricultural alternatives that reduce natural resources use, promote efficient water use, minimize food losses during production chain, mitigate the environmental impact of food transportation, and improve both crop productivity and the accumulation of health-promoting bioactive compounds in plant-based foods.
Dr. Vicente Agulló García
Prof. Dr. Fabiano Guimarães Silva
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
- sustainable food processing
- functional food
- food waste reduction
- crop yield
- bioactive compounds
- by-products revalorization
- nutrition
- local food production
- health promotion
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