Food Science and Agriculture: Research Highlights Vol. 10

Milk-Derived Extracellular Vesicles at the Food–Health Interface: A Critical Appraisal of Bioactive Cargo, Processing Resilience and Therapeutic Translation

2026-09-18T10:43:50+00:00

Milk contains lipid-bilayer nanoparticles that survive several of the conditions encountered during dairy manufacture and gastrointestinal transit, and that carry microRNA, protein, lipid and glycan cargo of putative biological consequence. Interest in these milk-derived extracellular vesicles has expanded rapidly across dairy science, infant nutrition, gastroenterology and pharmaceutics, yet the literature has developed along disciplinary lines that rarely interrogate one another. This review examines the field at the point where food technology, nutritional physiology and therapeutic delivery intersect, and asks how much of the reported bioactivity is secure once analytical, dosimetric and translational limitations are taken into account. Literature was identified through structured searching of open scholarly indexes, citation tracking and verification of bibliographic records against registry and publisher sources, with critical appraisal directed at analyte definition, dose reporting, control selection and the correspondence between mechanism and outcome. Four conclusions emerge. Compositional description is comparatively secure, and conserved microRNA and lipid signatures across ruminant and human milk are reproducible. Absorption is real but quantitatively unsettled, with published estimates of oral bioavailability differing by an order of magnitude for reasons that are traceable to labelling strategy and analyte definition rather than to species or dose. Functional evidence is dominated by rodent models using preparations whose purity is seldom demonstrated, and the few controlled human observations show measurable postprandial changes in circulating microRNA without accompanying physiological effect. Processing effects are directional and reasonably consistent, although quantitative comparisons across studies are compromised by inconsistent normalisation. Reports that oral administration accelerated metastasis in murine models, and the absence of registered clinical trials, indicate that enthusiasm for functional dairy applications has advanced further than the safety and dosimetry evidence supporting it. Priorities include purity-controlled preparations, standardised dose expression, and human studies with physiological rather than molecular endpoints.

Life-Cycle Assessment of Cultivated Meat, Precision Fermentation and Insect-Based Protein Systems: A Critical Narrative Review of Evidence, Assumptions and Scale-Up Uncertainty

2026-09-18T10:52:17+00:00

Alternative proteins are frequently presented as lower-impact substitutes for livestock products, yet life-cycle assessment (LCA) results for cultivated meat, precision fermentation and insect-based systems remain unusually sensitive to technology maturity, energy supply, feedstock choice, functional unit and counterfactual assumptions. This critical narrative review evaluates what can be concluded across the three technology families and which claims remain conditional. Peer-reviewed studies and methodological guidance published from 1 January 2000 to 3 July 2026 were identified through eight scholarly discovery and bibliographic sources, citation chaining and targeted searches of institutional repositories. Evidence was appraised for technological representativeness, system boundary, functionality, allocation, inventory transparency, uncertainty analysis and comparability. The strongest cross-system finding is that low land occupation is plausible for all three families, but climate and energy performance are not intrinsic properties of the product category. Cultivated meat is dominated by medium production, ingredient purification, bioreactor operation and thermal control; estimates span potential advantages over beef to burdens exceeding conventional meat when pharmaceutical-grade inputs or fossil-intensive electricity are assumed. Precision fermentation and microbial biomass can sharply reduce land use, yet electricity, carbohydrate production, aeration, sterilisation and downstream recovery determine whether climate gains follow. Insect systems can valorise some low-opportunity-cost streams and often reduce land demand, but feed production, heating, drying, direct emissions and displaced waste-management services frequently govern outcomes. Comparisons based only on mass systematically obscure digestibility, amino-acid quality, edible yield and product function. The review proposes a decision framework centred on matched functionality, transparent foreground inventories, prospective energy and feedstock scenarios, explicit co-product and counterfactual modelling, and uncertainty ranges rather than categorical rankings. Alternative proteins should therefore be understood as configurable production systems whose environmental merit depends on design and context, not as uniformly sustainable commodities.

Emerging Microalgal Resources for Food and Feed: Production, Processing and Commercialisation Challenges

2026-09-18T10:55:51+00:00

Microalgae and commercially allied microorganisms are increasingly proposed as resources for proteins, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, pigments and functional carbohydrates in human food and animal feed. Yet the distance between compositional promise and cost-competitive, safe, acceptable products remains substantial. This critical narrative review integrates evidence across resource selection, cultivation, downstream processing, nutritional bioaccessibility, food formulation, feed performance, safety, regulation, techno-economics and environmental assessment. Literature published from 1 January 2000 to 4 July 2026 was considered, with older studies retained only when conceptually necessary. The evidence shows that commercial maturity is concentrated in a small number of biomass and high-value ingredient categories, whereas emerging taxa such as Tetraselmis, Nannochloropsis, Phaeodactylum tricornutum, Euglena gracilis, Galdieria sulphuraria and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii remain at uneven stages of nutritional, technological and regulatory validation. No cultivation platform is intrinsically optimal: open systems can reduce capital intensity but increase contamination and variability risks; closed photobioreactors provide greater control at higher cost and energy demand; and heterotrophic fermentation can achieve high cell densities but transfers environmental and economic burdens to carbon substrates and sterile operation. Downstream processing frequently determines whether nutrients are bioaccessible and whether ingredients are sensorially and functionally usable, but intensive disruption, extraction and drying can erode cost and sustainability advantages. Feed evidence is strongest in aquaculture, where microalgal proteins and lipids can replace defined fractions of fishmeal or fish oil under formulation-specific conditions, while broad generalisation across species and life stages remains unwarranted. Commercialisation therefore depends on product-specific matching of organism, cultivation mode, processing severity, end-use specification and regulatory pathway. Future progress requires strain-by-process optimisation, standardised nutritional assessment, realistic pilot-scale techno-economic and life-cycle data, safety-by-design for circular substrates, and trials that test foods and feeds at commercially relevant inclusion levels rather than compositional potential alone.