Challenges in Sustainable Agriculture and Cities Development: Innovations and Improvements, From Cradle to Grave, Including Connections between Agro-Food Productions and Markets

Dear Colleagues,

The world's population is growing constantly, and is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. This growth goes hand-in-hand with the increasing demand of food and with cities expansion and development, exacerbating environmental pressure.

Since that our planet is facing an unsustainable increase of the environmental impacts, we are called to provide innovations, improvements, and solutions which could significantly reduce the environmental pressures related to food productions and cities development.

In the case of food productions, these ameliorations need to be focused on the entire production chains, using an approach from cradle to grave. For these reasons, scientific contributions able to increase the sustainability of short food supply chains, local productions, and global traded products, fall within the scope of this special issue.

This special issue aims to create a collection of innovative scientific contributions (reviews, original research papers, short communications, letter to the editor and viewpoints) able to improve the sustainability of agro-food productions and cities development. In particular, scientific contributions related to the reduction of the environmental impacts in the following research fields are particularly welcome:

• Crops cultivation and harvesting/post-harvesting (including processing and storage).
• Innovations in livestock and plant breeding
• Primary ingredients and raw materials production.
• Processing of raw materials and ingredients in food production.
• Processing technologies and equipment.
• Ingredients and food packaging.
• Innovations in food distribution, logistic, and marketing.
• Improvement of the connections between food productions and local or global markets
• Waste and by-product treatment (in particular for the production of extracts with bio-active compounds)
• Sustainable alternative sources of protein
• Life-cycle assessment in food productions and cities development, including improvement strategies
• Valorization of mountain, arid, or semi-arid areas for agro-food production or for urban areas development
• Sustainability of urban development and building construction
• Energy efficiency of buildings and urban areas
• Aquaponic and hydroponic in combination with aquaculture and urban development
• Challenges, opportunities, and threats related to the actual COVID-19 pandemic in sustainable agriculture, food production, and cities development.

Dr. Alessio Cappelli
Guest Editor

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