Cereal and Cereal-Derived Products: Processing, Functional Properties and Applications in Foods
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Grain".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 November 2026 | Viewed by 1762
Special Issue Editors
Interests: AI applications in nondestructive food evaluation; sustainable food processing; ancient grain valorization; food processing waste valorization; extrusion processing; non-thermal processing of foods; food microstructural characterization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: seed food value-addition; starch and protein extraction, modification and applications; alternative proteins processing; food biochemistry; food preservation technologies
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Cereals have always played a crucial role in the human diet. They are a major source of essential macromolecules and micronutrients in our food. From ancient times to now, they have been used in traditional settings and modern food manufacturing plants to produce a variety of nutritious, palatable, and unique food items. Common cereals, such as corn (maize), rice, wheat, and barley, are basic ingredients in the production of baking, pastry, alcoholic, and non-alcoholic beverages. Lesser-used cereals and pseudo-cereals, such as sorghum, millets, oats, amaranth, rye, quinoa, and buckwheat, have their place in traditional and modern food manufacturing. Some of their constituents are extracted as secondary ingredients with specific functionalities that are used as binders, emulsifiers, thickeners, protective coatings/films, antioxidants, prebiotics, viscoelastic property enhancers, and foaming agents, among others. Furthermore, cereals are a rich source of calories in various forms, including carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids.
This Special Issue, titled “Cereal and Cereal-Derived Products: Processing, Functional Properties and Applications in Foods,” explores our current understanding of cereals as functional food ingredients, their properties that are yet to be elucidated, modern conversion and modification processes, and their unique role in food processing. It also highlights their modern applications as ingredients in making nutritious foods, for example, in the development of alternative protein foods and a new understanding of their functionality. This Special Issue will consider any paper that addresses current gaps and novel ideas and technologies related to the value addition of ancient grains, improvement of grain functional properties, grains as ingredients in alternative protein products, novel grain processing methods, and more, for all grass-based seeds used in human food applications.
Dr. Akinbode A. Adedeji
Dr. Samson Oyeyinka
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 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
- ancient grains valorization
- grain functional properties modifications
- grains in alternative protein innovation
- sustainable grain processing
- grains as functional foods
- characterization of grain macromolecules
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