Ensuring adequate food availability to an increasing world population constitutes one of the biggest challenges faced by humankind. Scientific and technological advances in food production during the last century enabled agriculture to cope with the concomitant increase in food demand. For example, cereal yields have more than doubled from a global average of 1.5 metric tons per hectare in the 1960s up to 3.2 metric tons per hectare in 2018. This was made possible by the work in different research fields such as agronomy, engineering, and plant sciences, showing that an inter and multidisciplinary approach is indispensable for significant progress. This manuscript is aimed at generating reflexion and analysis about the challenges that agriculture faces at present to satisfy projected food demands, which implies a further doubling of food production by 2050, according to the latest estimates. Relevant issues related to food production (climate change, pollution of water and soils by pesticides and fertilizers, loss of germplasm and biodiversity) are discussed and potential solutions to achieve food security in quantity and quality are reviewed, mainly from the plant breeding and crop‐production perspectives, always associated with environmental health preservation and improvement. A broad transdisciplinary effort is needed to increase the impact of science and technology to provide more people with healthier and safer food, produced in a sustainable way. Nonetheless, science and technology alone will not succeed to meet those challenges. Education and knowledge transfer strategies are needed to guarantee responsible production and consumption everywhere, therefore allowing the benefits of scientific and technological progress reach the world population. Simultaneously, adequate action by regulatory authorities and governments concerted at international level, with thorough application of the Precautionary Principle, and aiming at environmental and social justice are imperatively required to meet the challenge and achieve the goal.

The aim of this research was to develop gluten-free (GF) and egg-free quinoa pasta with high nutritional value. Extruded and non-extruded quinoa (red and white) flour, potato starch, tara gum, and potato, pea and rice protein isolates were investigated in different recipes, some of them included egg white as an initial reference point. Results showed that extruded quinoa flour, potato starch and tara gum had deteriorating effects on GF and egg-free pasta firmness and cooking quality. Lupine flour addition itself was not able to replace egg white when added in the same amounts, but after increasing the concentration to 12%, the firmness and cooking quality decreasing effects could be improved again, especially when tara gum was absent in the formulations. In the final recipe, the content of lupine flour was increased to 30% because its protein is complementary to the quinoa protein. From the three studied protein isolates, pea protein was superior to potato or rice protein, addition of the oxidizing enzyme POx could even further improve texture firmness. After these trials, the final recipe containing lupine flour, pea protein and POx showed satisfying GF noodle quality and possessed a valuable nutritional composition with high protein and dietary fibre content.

The evaluation of the level of alkaloids in edible Lupinus species is crucial from a food safety point of view. Debittering of lupin seeds has a long history; however, the control of the level of alkaloids after processing the seeds is typically only evaluated by changes in the bitter taste. The aim of this study was to evaluate the profile and residual levels of quinolizidine alkaloids (QA) in (Lupinus mutabilis Sweet) after aqueous debittering process. Samples from 10 ecotypes from different areas of Peru were analyzed before and after the process. Based on results obtained by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, from eight alkaloids identified before the debittering process, only small amounts of lupanine (avg. 0.0012 g/100 g DM) and sparteine (avg. 0.0014 g/100 g DM) remained in the seeds after the debittering process, and no other alkaloids were identified. The aqueous debittering process reduced the content of alkaloids to levels far below the maximal level allowed by international regulations (≤ 0.2 g/kg DM).