Nutritional and Therapeutic Metabolites from Ethnomedicine and Agri-Food Sources: Emerging Research and Applications
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Phytochemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 37
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Bioactive metabolites derived from ethnomedicinal plants and agri-food sources play a pivotal role in modern health sciences due to their diverse nutritional and therapeutic properties. As the global interest in natural health-promoting metabolites continues to grow, the integration of ethnopharmacological knowledge with food science opens up promising avenues for innovation in nutraceuticals, functional foods, and preventive medicine. This Special Issue aims at advancing scientific understanding and foster translational applications in nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and functional nutrition. It highlights the nutritional and therapeutic potential of natural active metabolites, emphasizing their role in disease prevention, health promotion, and novel drug discovery. For this upcoming collection, we invite the submission of original research articles, reviews, and short communications that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Isolation and identification of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants and agri-food sources;
- Ethnobotanical strategies for identifying nutritionally significant plant-based bioactive metabolites;
- Functional foods and dietary supplements derived from ethnobotanically significant plant species and agricultural crops;
- Mechanistic studies on the health effects of plant-derived bioactive metabolites;
- Recent advances in extraction, formulation, and delivery systems for plant bioactive metabolites;
- Characterization of nutritional and therapeutic compounds using metabolomics approaches;
- Clinical and preclinical evaluation of food-derived bioactive metabolites in disease management.
Dr. Mamadou Aliou Balde
Guest Editor
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. Plants 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 2700 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 metabolites
- metabolomics
- natural products
- functional food development
- ethnomedicine
- therapeutic metabolites
- agri-food by-products
- green extraction technologies
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