Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd) and chia (Salvia hispanica) are essential traditional crops with excellent nutritional properties. Quinoa is known for its high and good quality protein content and nine essential amino acids vital for an individual’s development and growth, whereas chia seeds contain high dietary fiber content, calories, lipids, minerals (calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, and zinc), and vitamins (A and B complex). Chia seeds are also known for their presence of a high amount of omega-3 fatty acids. Both quinoa and chia seeds are gluten-free and provide medicinal properties due to bioactive compounds, which help combat various chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic diseases such as cancer. Quinoa seeds possess phenolic compounds, particularly kaempferol, which can help prevent cancer. Many food products can be developed by fortifying quinoa and chia seeds in different concentrations to enhance their nutritional profile, such as extruded snacks, meat products, etc. Furthermore, it highlights the value-added products that can be developed by including quinoa and chia seeds, alone and in combination. This review focused on the recent development in quinoa and chia seeds nutritional, bioactive properties, and processing for potential human health and therapeutic applications.

An increase in the consumption of carbohydrate-rich cereals over past few decades has led to increased metabolic disorders in population. This nutritional imbalance in diets may be corrected by substituting cereal grains with pseudocereals that are richer in high-quality proteins, dietary fibers, unsaturated fats, and bioactive compounds (e.g., polyphenols and phytosterols) as compared to cereal grains. These nutrients have been associated with numerous health benefits, such as hypolipidemic, anti-inflammatory, anti-hypertensive, anti-cancer, and hepatoprotective properties, and benefits against obesity and diabetes. In this review, the nutritional composition and health benefits of quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat are compared against wheat, maize, and rice. Subsequently, the processing treatments applied to quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat and their applications into food products are discussed. This is relevant since there is substantial market potential for both pseudocereals and functional foods formulated with pseudocereals. Despite clear benefits, the current progress is slowed down by the fact that the cultivation of these pseudocereals is limited to its native regions. Therefore, to meet the global needs, it is imperative to support worldwide cultivation of these nutrient-rich pseudocereals.

Mycotoxins are fungi-produced secondary metabolites that can contaminate many foods eaten by humans and animals. Deoxynivalenol (DON), which is formed by Fusarium, is one of the most common occurring predominantly in cereal grains and thus poses a significant health risk. When DON is ingested, it can cause both acute and chronic toxicity. Acute signs include abdominal pain, anorexia, diarrhea, increased salivation, vomiting, and malaise. The most common effects of chronic DON exposure include changes in dietary efficacy, weight loss, and anorexia. This review provides a succinct overview of various sources, biosynthetic mechanisms, and genes governing DON production, along with its consequences on human and animal health. It also covers the effect of environmental factors on its production with potential detection, management, and control strategies.

Vanillin is an extensively used flavor compound valuable in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Vanillin flavoring compound is present as natural, synthetic, and biotechnologically generated. The food safety authorities contemplate biotechnologically-derived vanillin as nature-identical vanillin. This review endeavors to present an overview of the microbial approach for vanillin production. This review summarizes the current trend in the biotechnologically-derived vanillin bioconversion from agricultural byproducts rich in eugenol, ferulic acid, isoeugenol, lignin, and de novo synthesis by bacteria, fungi, and recombinant microbial cells. This review also outlines the enzymes involved in vanillin synthesis. The subsequent section deals with the cultural conditions needed for the enhanced production of vanillin. This review offers broad knowledge about the downstream processes such as isolation, characterization, purification, and recovery. The concluding section describes the limitation in the production process, specifically toxicity and by-product formation, and various strategies to overcome these factors using fermentation technology with adsorbent resins and recombinant microbial cells.

With the advancement in the technologies and globalization, people are now focusing more on healthy products such as fruits, vegetables having good nutrition capability with enhanced shelf life. The edible coating is one such technique that can be used to enhance the shelf life of fruits, vegetables, and other food products. Various types of edible coatings such as protein based, lipid based, pectin based, and chitosan based are used in food products. However, edible coatings sometimes provide unpleasant flavor and toxicity to the food products. Thus, to overcome this problem newly developed design of active edible coatings to encapsulate the lipophilic active compounds in the form of nanoemulsions plays a vital role in increasing the functionality of the food product and acts as a newer approach in edible packaging. Many active ingredients are used to preserve the quality and provide nutritional benefits to food products such as antimicrobial activity by nanoemulsions containing essential oils. Therefore, the major aim of this review is to study and highlight the newer alternative approach of using nanoemulsions based edible coatings in food products. It also emphasizes on the recent advances for improving the quality and shelf life of food products.