Advances in Fruit and Vegetable Quality, Bioactive Compounds, and Nutritional Value: Volume II

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing demand for fresh fruit- and vegetable-based products is related to growing evidence regarding both their nutritional value and the presence of health-promoting compounds. However, fresh fruits and vegetables are highly perishable, leading to significant losses throughout the whole supply chain. Thus, extending the shelf life of minimally processed fruit and vegetables while retaining overall quality remains a challenging task. For this purpose, the application of emerging processes and the development of edible coatings and films are some of the currently applied strategies to overcome these disadvantages. On the other hand, innovative approaches have been proposed to valorize waste and fruit and vegetable byproducts including green extraction procedures for bioactive ingredients, micro/nanoencapsulation, fermentation processes, and the synthesis of nanoparticles, among others. Thus, this Special Issue seeks to provide an overview of recent advancements in processes aiming toward maintaining the overall quality (microbiological, sensory, and nutritional) of fresh-cut fruit and vegetables for prolonged storage as well as green approaches that deal with valorizing waste from the agrofood industry. The development of novel functional foods containing fruit- and vegetable-waste-based ingredients will be also considered.

We invite researchers to submit original research or review articles to this Special Issue that are in line with the above-mentioned objectives. These high-quality articles should consider one or more of the following topics: emerging preservation technologies, edible coatings and films, fermentation processes, green extraction technologies, micro/nanoencapsulation, the synthesis of nanoparticles for application in the food industry, the incorporation of bioactive compounds into functional foods, and/or sustainable valorizing processes.

Dr. Lucía Cassani
Dr. Andrea Gomez-Zavaglia
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 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. 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.

• valorizing strategies
• overall quality
• extended shelf life
• green processes
• bioactive compounds
• stabilizing approaches
• nanotechnology
• functional foods