Food Science and Engineering for Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Food demand is expected to increase anywhere between 59% to 98% by 2050, which raises great concerns over a global food crisis in the future. In order to address this pressing issue, the concept of a sustainable food system has been proposed and has attracted lots of attention. As defined by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, a sustainable food system should be environmentally friendly, socially beneficial and economically viable. To meet these requirements, researchers in both academia and industry have been making tremendous efforts to develop innovative food science and engineering techniques throughout all stages of the food industry from production to consumption.

The aims of this Special Issue are to present the challenges and opportunities in developing sustainable food systems, share the state-of-the-art techniques for sustainable food processing and discuss the recent discoveries in fundamental food science to improve sustainability. This Special Issue will summarize the recent progress and initiatives to improve sustainable food systems and provide up-to-date studies on innovative approaches to enhance sustainability in food science and engineering. Therefore, we are very pleased to invite you to contribute original research articles and reviews to this Special Issue. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Agricultural and food waste valorization.
2. Sustainable alternative food processing technologies (eco-friendly extraction and processing, energy-efficient designs and innovative biotechnology for food production).
3. Sustainable food product development (plant-based meat and cell factories for sustainable food production).
4. Smart materials for food packaging and storage.
5. Fundamental research in food science to enhance the nutritional value of food (chemical/enzymatic treatment, encapsulation, and food nanotechnologies).
6. Social science studies including sustainable food supply chains, customs attitudes and behavior, and government’s policies.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Long Yu
Prof. Dr. Ping Dong
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. Sustainability 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 2400 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.