According to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), achieving safe and healthier foods was one of the top ten achievements of public health in the 20th century. However, considerable persisting challenges currently exist in developed nations and developing economies for further assuring the safety and security of the food supplies. According to CDC estimates, as many as 3000 American adults, as an example, and based on a recent epidemiological estimate of the World Health Organization, around 420,000 individuals around the globe, lose their lives annually due to foodborne diseases. This emphasizes the need for innovative and emerging interventions, for further prevention or mitigation of the risk of foodborne microbial pathogens during food processing and manufacturing. The current publication discusses recent advancements and progress in the elimination and decontamination of microbial pathogens during various stages of manufacturing and production. Special emphasis is placed on hurdle validation studies, investigating decontamination of non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica serovars, various serogroups of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, public health-significant serotypes of Listeria monocytogenes, and pathogenic species of Cronobacter.

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The global karst distribution area is nearly 22 million km2, accounting for ca. 15% of land area, and the population living in karst areas is approximately one billion. Strong karstification makes the soil environment dry and with high pH and high content of calcium (bicarbonate). The karst environment with a high spatiotemporal heterogeneity seriously affects the growth and development of plants. Faced with these heterogeneous environments, plants have adopted diversified adaptive strategies. This Special Issue is a collection of 15 important research works, which demonstrated some achievements on the physiological and ecological adaption of plants to heterogeneous karst environments, and also explore how to extend the service period of plant resources in karst regions. These works will help to understand the karst-adaptability of plants from multiple perspectives and provide a scientific reference for the selection of karst-adaptable plants and the restoration of vegetation in karst areas. Meanwhile, they will provide theoretical support for organic integration towards economic, social and environmental sustainability of karst areas, and the beautiful vision of "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains". In the future, we look forward to more emerging research on adaptive plants in the karst ecosystem, which will serve better in maintaining ecosystems (carbon neutral), ensuring food supply and promoting sustainable social development.

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This book will provide the most recent knowledge and advances in Sample Preparation Techniques for Separation Science. Everyone working in a laboratory must be familiar with the basis of these technologies, and they often involve elaborate and time-consuming procedures that can take up to 80% of the total analysis time. Sample preparation is an essential step in most of the analytical methods for environmental and biomedical analysis, since the target analytes are often not detected in their in-situ forms, or the results are distorted by interfering species. In the past decade, modern sample preparation techniques have aimed to comply with green analytical chemistry principles, leading to simplification, miniaturization, easy manipulation of the analytical devices, low costs, strong reduction or absence of toxic organic solvents, as well as low sample volume requirements.Modern Sample Preparation Approaches for Separation Science also provides an invaluable reference tool for analytical chemists in the chemical, biological, pharmaceutical, environmental, and forensic sciences.

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Many North American plants have characteristics that are especially promising as candidates for expanding our food supply and generating new economically competitive crops. This book is an informative analysis of the top 100 indigenous food plants of North America, focusing on those species that have achieved commercial success or have substantial market potential. The book's user-friendly format provides concise information on each plant. It examines the geography and ecology, history, economic and social importance, food and industrial uses, and the economic future of each crop.

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Processing and storage can cause changes and interactions in food components that have effects on nutritional value, organoleptic characteristics or even food safety. This book includes 19 research works showing important and interesting advances, as well as new approaches, in this research topic. Four articles are dedicated to studying the effect of canning conditions (filling media and some ingredients) on the diverse parameters of quality for fish and pet foods. Three articles are devoted to studying the effects of dehydration (pre-treatments and drying procedures). One article is dedicated to monitoring the elaboration of a fermented and dehydrated product (sausage) using a portable NIRS device. The ninth article of this book studies the effect of low-dose electron beam irradiation on cooking quality, moisture migration, and thermodynamics, as well as the digestion properties of the isolated starches in newly harvested and dried rice. The next contribution studies the use of different preservatives to avoid the formation of undesirable volatile organic compounds in stracciatella cheese. Another article examines the impact of source material, kibble size, temperature, and duration on the efficiency of the aqueous extraction of sugars and phenolics from carob kibbles by conventional heat-assisted (HAE) and ultrasound-assisted (UAE) methods. In two articles, marinating with different extracts, alone or combined with other seasoning/conditioning methods, was essayed to tenderize beef or to improve the sensory quality of chicken leg and breast meat. The effect of various cooking methods on the quality, structure, pasting, water distribution and protein oxidation of fish and meat-based snacks is studied in the fourteenth article. The last five articles are dedicated to the study of the effects of storage on several foods (olive oil, blueberry, beetroot and Atlantic mackerel).

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This Special Issue of Life, entitled "Plants as a Promising Biofactory for Bioactive Compounds," showcases the latest research that explores the utilization of plant biofactories for the production of compounds with multiple biological effects, including antioxidant, antitumor, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-Alzheimer, antihemolytic, neuroprotective, and pesticide activities.

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Both aroma and taste are important quality criteria for food products, and they have a great influence on our consumption behaviours. In recent years, a significant increase in the number of studies related to the identification of the characteristic odor- and taste-active compounds of particular foods has been observed.In this book, you can find nine valuable scientific contributions, which deal with the more recent analytical developments for the identification of some compounds responsible for odor and taste in foods such as ham, beer, strawberry, Amontillado sherry wine and others, in order to authenticate them or evaluate the effect of different techniques or making stages on their aroma and taste.

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