Dear Colleagues,

Special attention by consumers towards food quality/labelling of food products has soared in recent years. The authentication and traceability of food attracts more interest internationally due to increasing consumer awareness regarding health and nutrition. Consequently, in the food industry, traceability systems, although in place, require approaches to address the problem of food authenticity to ensure food product quality is adhered to. It is also vital to identify if intentional or unintentional food fraud has occurred. In addition, any alleged declarations on a label of a food product must always be checked to verify its accuracy. Mounting competitiveness in the global food sector has, in turn, led to the presence of a large variety of duplicate products on the global market, whose global quality characteristics are, nevertheless, not the same.  

There is a need for innovative analytical approaches in the food safety field to authenticate the food quality of products for consumers. The evaluation of spectroscopy tools is rapidly gaining ground at all levels in food authenticity analyses. Chemometrics can be deemed an essential approach for the differentiation of similar samples that require authentication by authorities. For instance, recent advances through the dissemination of ‘fingerprinting strategies’ have enabled the study of many factors that influence food identity. It is worth noting that in authenticity studies, there are a wide range of areas to consider, such as chemical constituents, freshness, toxic substances, microorganisms and adulteration monitoring. In addition, providing evidence of the traceability of food variety and origin is critical. 

This Special Issue invites authors to submit articles that focus on spectroscopy and chemometrics in an area of food authenticity that may focus on the topics below (or authenticity studies on additional topics not listed). 

• Identification of products in accordance with the associated species;  
• Farming system approaches (conventional or organic; intensive, semi-intensive, or extensive); 
• Geographical origin (countries of source); 
• Production methods (wild or farmed); 
• Processing techniques (fresh or fresh/thawed). 

Dr. Geraldine Dowling
Prof. Dr. Emilio Alvarez-Parrilla
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. Foods 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 2900 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.

• traceability
• food authentication
• chemometrics
• fingerprinting
• vibrational spectroscopy
• absorption/fluorescence spectroscopy
• nuclear magnetic resonance
• hyperspectral imaging
• geographical origin
• food fraud