The global food industry is facing growing pressure to enhance food safety, extend shelf life, minimize waste, and adopt environmentally sustainable packaging solution. Nanotechnology offers innovative ways to meet these demands by enabling the creation of smart and sustainable food packaging systems. Due to their unique properties, nanomaterials can significantly enhance the functional performance of packaging by boosting mechanical strength, barrier efficiency, antimicrobial activity, and responsiveness to environmental stimuli. This review provides a comprehensive overview of nanomaterials used as smart and sustainable food packaging, focusing on their role in active and intelligent packaging systems. By integrating nanomaterials like metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, carbon-based nanostructures, and nano-biopolymers, packaging can now perform real-time sensing, spoilage detection, and traceability. These systems improve food quality management and supply chain transparency while supporting global sustainability goals. The review also discusses potential risks related to nanomaterials’ migration, environmental impact, and consumer safety, as well as the current regulatory landscape and limitations in industrial scalability. Emphasis is placed on the importance of standardized safety assessments and eco-friendly design to support responsible innovation. Overall, nano-enabled smart packaging represents a promising strategy for advancing food safety and sustainability. Future developments will require collaboration across disciplines and robust regulatory frameworks to ensure the safe and practical application of nanotechnology in food systems.

Legumes are sustainable protein-rich crops with numerous industrial food applications, which give them the potential of a functional food ingredient. Legume proteins have appreciable techno-functional properties (e.g., emulsification, foaming, water absorption), which could be affected along with its digestibility during processing. Extraction and isolation of legumes’ protein content makes their use more efficient; however, exposure to the conditions of further use (such as temperature and pressure) results in, and significantly increases, changes in the structural, and therefore functional and nutritional, properties. The present review focuses on the quality of legume protein concentrates and their changes under the influence of different physical processing treatments and highlights the effect of processing techniques on the structural, functional, and some of the nutritional, properties of legume proteins.

The relationship between agriculture and food is very close. It is impossible to produce adequate crops for global food security without proper farm management. Farming practices represent direct and indirect controlling factors in terms of global food security. Farming management practices influence agro-food production from seed germination through to the post-harvest treatments. Nano-farming utilizes nanotechnologies for agricultural food production. This review covers four key components of nano-farming: nano-mushroom production, protein-based nanoparticles, nano-nutrients, and nanofibers. This provides a comprehensive overview of the potential applications of nanotechnology in agriculture. The role of these components will be discussed in relation to the challenges faced and solutions required to achieve sustainable agricultural production. Edible mushrooms are important to food security because they are a nutritious food source and can produce nanoparticles that can be used in the production of other food sources. Protein-based nanoparticles have considerable potential in the delivery of bioactives as carriers and other applications. Nano-nutrients (mainly nano-selenium, nano-tellurium and carbon nanodots) have crucial impacts on the nutrient status of plant-based foods. Carbon nanodots and other carbon-based nanomaterials have the potential to influence agricultural crops positively. There are promising applications of nanofibers in food packaging, safety and processing. However, further research is needed to understand the impacts and potential risks of nanomaterials in the food production system.

Cereal products are regarded as important protein providers, though they could feature poor nutritional quality due to their occasional imbalanced amino acid content. Cereal proteins are low in cysteine or tryptophan, and rich in methionine; however, while their combination with legume proteins makes them nutritionally more comprehensive, such a possibility must be addressed by the cereal processing industry. However, the incorporation of legume protein concentrates and isolates might also influence the functionality and bioavailability of some cereal constituents. Therefore, the objective of the present review is to gain insights into the effects of cereal products incorporated with legume protein isolates/concentrates, knowing that both the cereals and the protein extracts/isolates are complex structural matrices, and besides the final products acceptability they should efficiently promote the health condition of consumers. The combination of legume proteins with cereals will bring about a structural complexity that must harmoniously include proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, polyphenols and dietary fibers to promote the bioaccessibility, bioavailability and bioactivity without cyto- and genotoxicity.

Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are emerging as promising eco-friendly solvents for various applications such as product extraction and quality preservation. However, their high viscosity may hinder their effectiveness. Therefore, incorporating water into DES can effectively mitigate this limitation. This study aims to assess how DES (choline chloride:glycerol (1:2)) hydration affects proteinous nitrogen diffusion, considering different extraction durations and mild temperatures (25–45 °C). The degree of DES hydration was identified as the most significant parameter influencing the extraction efficiency. The incorporation of high water content (~50–70%), creating a transition toward a “DES-in-water” system, allowed a nitrogen transfer similar to that mediated by pure water. This result may indicate disruption of the specific H-bonded DES complex. Although using 60% of DES at 45 °C revealed the lowest N yield, the protein’s molecular weight distribution suggested the presence of β-conglycinin (7S) and the acidic subunit of Glycinin (11S) fractions of soybean. Despite the fluorescence analysis showing no impurities such as oxidized lipid or Maillard reaction conjugates, the protein was denatured. Graphical Abstract