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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental constraints in a global economy of a growing world population require urgent adaptation of food supply of high nutritional value, better utilization of its byproducts, and isolation of bioactive compounds which can be used for various purposes. Valorization is a popular concept in the field of agro-related industrial residues management, which aims to offer ways to promote the development of sustainable food systems for current consumers and future generations—particularly the recovery of bioactive chemicals and the production of multifunctional materials from agro-related byproducts and biowaste via developing advanced and innovative chemical and biotechnological processes.

Agro-related byproducts are promising sources of value-added substances, with nutritional compositions which are particularly rich in sugars, vitamins, minerals, and natural macromolecules of high interest for the chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industry. Developing novel technologies or optimizing traditional methods for better valorization of agro-related byproducts holds immense potential as it generates food nutrients, prospective productions of commercial biologicals (enzymes, pigments, flavors, functional ingredients, micronutrients, nutraceuticals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, phytochemicals), and new bioactive materials (edible films, coatings, and intelligent packaging materials).

This Special Issue of Sustainability, with the theme of Food Sustainability, aims to publish research or review articles dealing with potential and innovative strategies to valorize agro-related byproducts for producing high-value added foods and advanced bioactive materials. The topics may include but are not limited to:

Novel technologies and processes in agro-related waste development;
Functional product development from agro-related byproducts;
Bioactive and/or multifunctional materials from agro-byproducts;
Approaches to overcome agro-related biowaste from sources;
Advanced data analytics related to guiding sustainable processing.

Dr. Weijie Lan
Prof. Dr. Wen Qin
Dr. Shuxiang Liu
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. 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.

Keywords

valorization of agro-related byproducts
food waste processing development
applied sustainable materials
functional products development from byproducts
sustainable methods of production

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

17 pages, 5849 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development and Optimization of a Topical Formulation with Castanea sativa Shells Extract Based on the Concept “Quality by Design”

by Nágilla Oliveira, Maria de la Luz Cádiz-Gurrea, Ana Margarida Silva, Catarina Macedo, Francisca Rodrigues and Paulo Costa

Sustainability 2022, 14(1), 129; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14010129 - 23 Dec 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2724

Abstract

The proposed study aims to develop and optimize a topical formulation with Castanea sativa shells extract considering the concept of Quality by Design, focusing on a planned development that consider the vulnerabilities of the entire process through risk analysis tools and design of experiments (DoE). A Box–Behnken design with three factors and three levels was used as a statistical tool for the execution of the DoE and the analysis of the response surface methodology responses. The independent variables studied were the quantity of sodium lauryl sulfate (%) (X1), beeswax (%) (X2) and macadamia oil (%) (X3); the dependent variables were pH (Y1), viscosity (Y2) and adhesiveness (Y3). According to the mathematical model, the optimal formulation contains 0.93% of sodium lauryl sulfate, 5.00% of beeswax and 10.00% of macadamia oil. The optimal formulation with the extract was prepared and characterized over the time, regarding organoleptic and technological characteristics, allowing conclusions to be reached regarding its stability. The formulation presented a pleasant odor and was light brown in color, it also demonstrated pseudoplastic-thixotropic behavior and a small reduction in the formulation consistency after 30 days of storage. This study demonstrated the efficiency of the Quality by Design methodology to understand the product variability, supporting that this approach favors a better understanding of the whole process and enables to design a robust development stage, reducing costs and generating high-quality products. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Valorization of Agro-Related by Products for the Next Generation of Foods and Bioactive Materials)

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