Recent Advances in Encapsulation for Food Applications

Dear Colleagues, 

Encapsulation has become a challenging approach to design new materials with biotechnological and functional applications, particularly in the food industry. The development of fortified foods and beverages containing a variety of bioactive agents is being investigated to take advantage of their health benefits. However, some of these bioactive compounds are incredibly sensitive to ambient or industrial process conditions. Normally, they are very volatile, react with other components, and are susceptible to heat and moisture. For all these reasons, encapsulation tools have emerged to protect their bioactivity and/or improve their bioaccessibility and bioavailability after ingestion. 

In this Special Issue, we aim at publishing innovative research results and review papers dealing with encapsulation of active and natural compounds. These papers can explore novel encapsulation techniques or encapsulation matrices, physicochemical characteristics of the encapsulation systems and their food applications, including sensorial characteristics, nutritional value of food products containing encapsulated compounds and/or their simulated digestion behavior. 

This Special Issue also seeks to provide a fundamental understanding and the current strategies to improve encapsulation of specific active and natural compounds such as flavors, vitamins, stabilizers, probiotics, essential oils, natural antioxidants, bioactive proteins and enzymes, among others. 

Dr. Berta Nogueiro Estevinho
Prof. Dr. Amparo López-Rubio
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.