Agricultural Product Quality Safety and Sustainable Development, 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

High agricultural product quality is fundamental for economic and social development, as food safety is currently one of the world’s most pressing concerns due to rapid urbanization and the continuously increasing population, especially in developing countries. According to the reports of the World Health Organization (WHO), food regulations and safety measures have been taken into account with regard to global health concerns. Additionally, governments around the world have deeply reformed the agricultural structure and direction, aiming to improve the quality of agricultural products. However, there are still some challenges when it comes to the safety of agricultural products, as food safety incidents still frequently occur, such as the occurrence of pesticide residues, heavy metal/toxin pollution, and other problems (e.g., meat adulteration, production and sale of fake agricultural products), which lead to severe health, economic and even social problems. All these events alert us to the importance and urgency of guaranteeing food safety, stimulating our interest in detection and analysis methods to ensure acceptable quality levels and the nutritional quality of agricultural products. Except for relevant policies and laws concerning food safety, the detection of food contaminants has attracted much attention over the past few decades. Food detection approaches must ensure the safety of food at every point in the food supply chain by monitoring and evaluating all hazards from every step of food production. In addition to traditional physicochemical methods (e.g., high-performance liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry), many efforts are using novel techniques with the advantages of being simple, rapid, nondestructive, inexpensive, reproducible, and repeatable (e.g., biomolecule-based sensing methods, electronic nose, and molecular imprinting technology). Many data have been produced, but analysis methods still need improving (regarding their selectivity, specificity, accuracy, and anti-interference performance).

This Special Issue will focus on the various aspects of “Agricultural Product Quality Safety and Detecting Techniques”, from quality/pollutant detection methods to authenticity evaluations and geographical origin identification. Authors are invited to submit original research papers, reviews, and short communications. Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Food safety and risk assessment;
2. Analysis methods of food contaminations;
3. Agricultural product quality analysis;
4. Authenticity assessments;
5. Geographical origin identification;
6. Nutritional quality analysis;
7. The environment of the producing area/agricultural input risk assessment;
8. Early diagnosis methods of agricultural diseases;
9. The application of virtual reality (VR) technology to agriculture.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Gang Liang
Dr. Wenshen Jia
Dr. Rui Feng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

• food safety
• agricultural product quality analysis
• bio-/sensor assay
• chromatographic detection
• nondestructive detecting
• food additives
• health risk assessment
• nutritional quality
• authenticity assessment
• quality classification

• Agricultural Product Quality Safety and Sustainable Development in Sustainability (8 articles)