Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to submit original articles to this Special Issue entitled “Waste and By-Products from Agricultural Production for Innovative Health Applications—Second Edition Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Botanical Garden “Giardino dei Semplici” of G. d’Annunzio University”.

 This Special Issue (SI) aims to highlight all aspects related to the preparation, the extraction, phytochemical investigations, and pharmacotoxicological investigations of plant materials derived from high-quality waste byproducts of medicinal, aromatic, and food plants. The aim of the present SI is focused on the new worldwide research interest in the valorization of productive chains that are improvable in terms of circular economy and sustainability. The SI will consider studies that are related to this aspect from multiple points of view, namely, the optimization of extraction, with particular regard to biocompatible solvents and processes, comparative studies of extraction techniques, and their pharmacotoxicological impacts on biological systems and human and animal health.

 Manuscripts describing at least one of the following items are welcome:

• The description of crude extracts, although the fingerprint analysis of secondary metabolites is an essential requirement; qualitative analyses will be accepted only if involving untargeted metabolomic analysis, as evidenced by HPLC-MS data; the analysis of selected secondary metabolites should be quantitative and carried out with validated chromatographic and/or spectroscopic methods.
• Pharmacotoxicological investigations performed at multiple levels (in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo studies): animal and clinical trials are welcome, although authorization for experimental procedures and/or the blank informed consent forms should be provided during submission; innovative approaches based on component–target analysis and alternative pharmatoxicological methods are also encouraged.
• Studies about isolated compounds from plant materials in comparison with the crude extracts.

The potential investigations and applications should not be limited to the sole chemical characterization of plant-derived extracts, and manuscripts suggesting new applicative fields for previously characterized extracts are encouraged.

Finally, in the present Special Issue, the Guest Editors would also like to note and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the “Giardino dei Semplici” botanical garden, which is operated by the “G. d’Annunzio” University within the Department of Pharmacy, as the elective place where academic innovation meets the reality of productive chains.

Prof. Dr. Claudio Ferrante
Prof. Dr. Luigi Menghini
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. Molecules 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 2700 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.

• botanical characterization
• pharmacological activity
• ecotoxicological fingerprint
• phytochemistry
• analytical methods