Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, food waste is an economic, social and ethical concern. The fact that a third of all food produced worldwide is never eaten is an evident economic loss. In addition, at this time of increasing resource scarcity, if our land, energy and water is used to produce food that ends up being thrown out. This causes social and ethical problems as well.

This concern has become especially challenging now because most of the food economies are reaching a steady state. The growth of the population and the level of food consumption are nearly zero in most modern societies. Consequently, the old targets based on productivity are no more sufficient alone to sustain our welfare and economic growth. Instead, new targets based on cost reduction are becoming more and more important. In this respect, the most modern policies are aimed at reducing the environmental and health impacts of waste and improve resources efficiency, with the long-term goal to build-up a recycling society able to turn waste into resources.

In this scenario, this second version of the Special Issue will strength all the research papers that will deepen our knowledge and understanding on how green and sustainable extraction technologies can recover bioactive molecules with functional properties from food by-products.

Relevant examples of topics expected in this Special Issue are:

• Bioconversion of food-by-products and their characterization for their antioxidative, antimicrobial, anticancer, antihypertensive, antidiabetic, and anticoagulant activities.
• Chemical, enzymatic and fermentation technologies for the valorization of food by-products.
• Application of emerging technologies for the extraction of bioactive compounds from food by-products, like supercritical fluids, ultrasound, pulsed electric field, enzyme-assisted extraction, etc.
• Characterization of the functional properties of bioactive compounds recovered from food by-products.
• Development of ingredients, supplements or foods based on food by-products.
• Analytical methods for the qualitative and quantitative determinations of the functional properties of food by-products.

Guest Editor

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• Food by-products
• Bioactive compounds
• Functional properties
• Emerging extraction technologies
• Antioxidant activity
• Antimicrobial activity