AI-Enabled Food Supply Chain Management: Advancing Efficiency, Resilience, and Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Global food supply chains are under intensifying pressure from climate variability, market volatility, quality and safety requirements, and sustainability targets. Advances in AI, including machine learning, optimization, simulation, and decision support, have provided powerful tools for improving forecasting accuracy, optimizing operations, reducing environmental impacts, and strengthening resilience against disruptions. 

This Special Issue invites the submission of original research, case studies, reviews, short communications, and perspectives that demonstrate how AI can transform food supply chain management. While bananas are one of our main focuses due to their global importance, perishability, and complex logistics, submissions on other commodities and cross-commodity methods are welcome. We especially encourage contributions that connect rigorous methodology with measurable real-world impact across efficiency, resilience, and sustainability. 

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Case studies and analysis on food supply chains (production, post-harvest handling, logistics, and retail);
• Data-driven intelligent demand forecasting for crop harvest (time-series, multimodal, and remote sensing data, and causal methods);
• Fresh produce shelf-life prediction models and algorithms (computer vision, IoT/sensing, degradation modelling, and cold-chain analytics);
• Harvest decision making for crop farms (reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, and decision optimization under uncertainty);
• Dynamic pricing for crop farms (market design, econometrics, reinforcement learning, mechanism design, and fairness);
• Food supply network modelling and optimization (network design, routing, inventory, facility location, and risk-aware optimization);
• Food resilience engineering (disruption modelling, stress testing, scenario analysis, stochastic optimization, and recovery strategies);
• Food sustainability assessment (life cycle assessment, carbon footprint modelling, energy and water use, circular economy, waste reduction, by product valorisation);
• Cold chain management and quality control (sensor fusion, anomaly detection, and predictive maintenance);
• Traceability and transparency (blockchain, digital twins, data standards, and interoperability);
• Human-centred and responsible AI (explainability, safety, ethics, equity, adoption barriers, and policy implications);
• Data and infrastructure (remote sensing, satellite/meteorological data integration, edge computing, and privacy-preserving analytics);
• Benchmarking and reproducibility (open datasets, standardized tasks, and comparative evaluations);
• Cross-commodity generalization and transfer (methods applicable to other perishable supply chains).

Contributions are expected from:

• Methodological advances in AI for forecasting, optimization, simulation, and decision support in food supply chains;
• Empirical studies using real-world datasets from farms, cooperatives, distributors, retailers, or public statistics;
• Integrated solutions combining AI with domain expertise, sustainability metrics, quality/safety constraints, and operational realities;
• Demonstrated impact: cost savings, waste reduction, quality improvement, emissions reduction, service-level gains, resilience outcomes, or policy relevance.

Manuscript types can be:

• Research articles;
• Review articles and surveys;
• Case studies and practice reports;
• Perspectives and commentaries;
• Dataset/benchmark papers and reproducibility studies. 

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Xue-Ming Yuan
Dr. Dikky Indrawan
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.

• AI in agriculture
• food supply chain
• demand forecasting
• shelf-life prediction
• reinforcement learning
• optimization
• life cycle assessment
• dynamic pricing
• network design