Zuhaili Yusof , Yen Wah Tong , Kumar Selvarajoo , Sheetal Kishor Parakh , Su Chern Foo
{"title":"Overcoming challenges in microalgal bioprocessing through data-driven and computational approaches","authors":"Zuhaili Yusof , Yen Wah Tong , Kumar Selvarajoo , Sheetal Kishor Parakh , Su Chern Foo","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101253","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101253","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Microalgae holds significant potential for sustainable food production, presenting challenges and opportunities. This review presents the key obstacles in microalgal bioprocessing, including cultivation methods optimisation, inconsistent biomass yields, high production costs, and stability of valuable compounds during processing. The gap in sustainable aspects of microalgae bioprocessing for food production is highlighted. Integrating omics technologies with microalgal bioprocessing can enhance the understanding of the cultivation process and improve microalgal yield and quality. When combined with advanced computational tools such as machine learning, digital twin technology, and process optimisation techniques, these approaches can significantly accelerate the adoption of circular economy principles in sustainable food production. Open databases and user-friendly software tools can lower learning barriers, encouraging broader microalgae research and development. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, microalgae can emerge as key players in sustainable food production, driving innovation and efficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101253"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strain-level identification of bacteria persisting in food and in food processing facilities: when do two isolates represent the same strain and which tools identify a strain?","authors":"Vi D Pham, David J Simpson, Michael G Gänzle","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101245","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101245","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Strain-level identification informs decisions on whether two isolates represent the same strain and is used in investigations of outbreaks of foodborne disease. The same concept has only rarely been applied to nonpathogenic microbes in food or food processing facilities. Strain-level monitoring of food microbes requires definitions and tools that have only partially been developed. The review defines the concept of ‘microbial strains’ to guide the tracking of strains in food and food processing facilities. In addition, we discuss whole genome sequencing (WGS) and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) calling as suitable tools for strain identification. Limitations of WGS and SNP analysis are also examined. Food spoilage causes food waste and fermented foods and probiotic foods are widely consumed. Therefore, strain identification and tracking of the food-associated microbes address a potential approach to eradicate pathogens and spoilage organisms in processing facilities and to ensure the quality of fermented foods and probiotic foods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101245"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maria Eduarda Marques Soutelino , Ramon da Silva Rocha , Eliane Teixeira Mársico , Erick Almeida Esmerino , Adriana Cristina de Oliveira Silva
{"title":"Innovative approaches to kefir production, challenges, and current remarks","authors":"Maria Eduarda Marques Soutelino , Ramon da Silva Rocha , Eliane Teixeira Mársico , Erick Almeida Esmerino , Adriana Cristina de Oliveira Silva","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101252","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101252","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Kefir, a fermented product with roots in the Caucasus region, has gained increasing attention due to its characteristic sensory attributes, low lactose content, and potential health benefits. This paper explores the recent innovations in kefir production, focusing on adding functional ingredients and applying new processing technologies. Incorporating fruit juices, plant extracts, and essential oils has been found to enhance kefir’s antioxidant and functional properties, while techniques such as spray drying and encapsulation offer opportunities to improve its stability and shelf life. However, it is important to note that these innovations may also impact the viability of beneficial microorganisms in kefir. This review aims to provide valuable insights into the current landscape of kefir innovation, highlighting its potential and the need for further research to address the challenges and limitations associated with these advancements.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101252"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward nutrient cycling from organic waste streams for soilless cultivation","authors":"Ranka Junge , Zala Schmautz , Sarah Milliken","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101257","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101257","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Soilless cultivation offers multiple benefits, such as higher productivity, reduced pesticide use, maximised water use efficiency, and protection from adverse environmental conditions, and will play an ever-greater role in providing food for the growing population. Whilst hydroponics denotes the use of nutrients of mineral origin, bioponics connects organic waste streams with microbial transformation and soilless cultivation, placing it at the centre of circular food production. Commercial bioponic growers need industrially produced fertilisers that are consistent in their quality and produce comparable yields to mineral fertilisers. This opinion piece examines four key issues that we think will determine whether recovered fertilisers become widely adopted by commercial soilless growers — efficacy, safety, sustainability, and economic viability — and concludes by proposing a roadmap to guide their development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101257"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143105190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emerging alternatives to control fungal contamination","authors":"Paloma Sánchez-Torres","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101255","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101255","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>One of the main challenges in food research is maintaining the food supply in a sustainable, safe, and nutritious way for an ever-growing population. Fungal contamination affects the productivity and quality of food, leading to its deterioration and great economic losses. Phytopathogenic fungi can destroy up to 30% of agricultural products. The presence of mycotoxin-producing fungi, in addition to damaging food, can further reduce the availability of fresh and safe food. Mycotoxins pose a health risk, constituting a significant threat to the quality and safety of food around the world. The use of synthetic fungicides is used to control fungi and mycotoxins, generating additional concern due to the toxicity of these products. Therefore, it is urgent to propose new control alternatives that help to prevent fungal contamination. This review provides an overview of some alternatives for the development of new, safe, and effective control methods against fungi that affect food safety.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101255"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143105191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yumeng Zhang, Yuanfang Xie, Junhua Shao, Xiqing Yue, Mohan Li
{"title":"Maillard reaction-based conjugates as carrier strategies for delivery of bioactive compounds: A review","authors":"Yumeng Zhang, Yuanfang Xie, Junhua Shao, Xiqing Yue, Mohan Li","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101260","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101260","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Bioactive compounds (BCs) have long been hindered by multiple barriers in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) preventing effective absorption. Thus, in order to further enhance the bioavailability of BCs, delivery systems consisting of conjugates using the Maillard reaction as carriers are gradually coming into the limelight. Since BCs are challenging for delivery in GIT, the delivery and release of BCs in this review will be updated and discussed based on the carriers of the Maillard conjugates. The focus includes emulsions, nanoparticles, microcapsules, gels, liposomes, and solid lipid nanoparticles. Upon this, the application of Maillard conjugates offers the possibility of targeted release of BCs <em>in vivo</em> and their protection. This review offers insights into delivery systems designed that improve bioavailability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101260"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fusion of food profiling data from very different analytical techniques","authors":"Kim C Brettschneider, Stephan Seifert","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101256","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101256","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The increasing demand for safe, authentic, and high-quality food requires high-resolution and rapid analytical methods to reliably verify these properties. As a result, a variety of approaches based on different analytical techniques, for example, based on mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, or imaging, have been developed. However, these approaches often focus on specific aspects of the complex composition of food and thus only consider a small part of food properties. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding and to obtain powerful approaches for food testing, it is particularly advantageous to combine data from very different analytical techniques. The combination of data sets with different properties in particular poses challenges, and there are different approaches for their fusion. In this article, we analyze and evaluate the current state of the art for fusing very different food data from various analytical techniques and make recommendations for approaches that can usefully be applied to data fusion.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101256"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143135750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chi Song , Yangtai Liu , Ruihua Ding , Hongzhi Zhang , Shilun Feng
{"title":"Advancements in nucleic acid–based enumeration methods for viable foodborne pathogenic bacteria","authors":"Chi Song , Yangtai Liu , Ruihua Ding , Hongzhi Zhang , Shilun Feng","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101254","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101254","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Foodborne diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria present a significant public health concern. The efficient and accurate identification and quantification of viable bacteria is crucial for preventing and mitigating disease outbreaks. This review summarizes the current status and recent advancements in enumeration methods for viable foodborne pathogenic bacteria. Special emphasis is placed on nucleic acid–based quantitative detection methods, including direct RNA-based detection and preprocessed DNA detection. The quantitative detection methods for viable bacteria are advancing to become more rapid, sensitive, robust, and automated. Nucleic acid–based enumeration methods may be the foundation of the next-generation quantitative microbiological risk analysis and play a pivotal role in the field of food safety.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101254"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Xue Yang , Lu Meng , Ashikur Rahman , Jiaqi Wang , Nan Zheng
{"title":"Comparison of fatty acid characteristics in human milk, bovine milk, and infant formula for better emulation","authors":"Xue Yang , Lu Meng , Ashikur Rahman , Jiaqi Wang , Nan Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101240","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101240","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Fatty acids (FAs) in human milk (HM) are essential for infant growth and development, particularly during the first six months of life. In infant formula (IF), FAs mainly originate from bovine milk (BM). However, comparative data on FA patterns and structures across HM, BM, and IF are limited. This review, analyzing 37 studies from 2018 to 2023, provides a comprehensive FA characteristic, highlighting their differences in macroscopic patterns and key structures. For detectable FAs, HM and BM exhibit more diverse FA species compared to IF. HM is richer in monounsaturated (MUFA) and polyunsaturated FAs (PUFA), while BM contains higher levels of saturated FAs (SFA), placing IF between the two. The content of MUFA (except for C18:1 c9, c20:1 c9) and PUFA (C18:2 n6, c18:2 c9 t11, c18:2 t10.c12, and c18:3 n3) in IF should be increased, and the content of SFA (C6:0, C8:0, C11:0, C12:0, C17:0) should be reduced in order to more closely simulate HM. The differences between HM and IF may be attributed to the use of BM as a base ingredient, mainly reflected in profile, structure, stability, and bioavailability. Despite the latest advancements, such as the addition of structural lipid 1,3-dioleoyl-2-palmitoylglycerol and milk fat globule membranes, fully replicating the complexity and functionality of HM FAs in IF remains challenging. Further investigation into these aspects could reveal new insights into how HM supports optimal infant health and development, providing the foundation for even more advanced IF formulations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101240"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Recent advances in Pickering emulsions for inhibiting foodborne bacteria","authors":"Chuye Ji, Yixiang Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101265","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cofs.2024.101265","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Foodborne bacteria pose significant risks to public health and economic conditions. Natural antibacterial agents have proven effective against foodborne bacterial contamination but often suffer from harsh environmental and processing conditions. Pickering emulsions, recognized for good stability, high loading capacity, sustained release, cost-effectiveness, low toxicity, biocompatibility, and sustainability, have emerged as efficient carriers for natural antibacterial agents and shown great promise in preserving fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and other foods by either direct coating or incorporation in active packaging films. With the growing interest in Pickering emulsions loaded with natural antibacterial agents, in this review, we highlight recent advances in their applications for inhibiting foodborne bacteria. The mostly investigated foodborne bacteria and the compositions and antibacterial mechanisms of natural antibacterial agents loaded Pickering emulsions are summarized, and food-related applications are spotlighted. Despite challenges, such as scalability and regulatory approval, antibacterial Pickering emulsions show great potential as sustainable preservatives for food preservation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54291,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Food Science","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 101265"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143096518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}