The increasing demand for sustainable and high-value bioactive ingredients has intensified the search for extraction strategies capable of overcoming the structural complexity of plant matrices and improving the recovery of phenolic compounds. In this context, the integration of hydrolytic enzymes with emerging extraction technologies has emerged as a promising approach to enhance extraction efficiency and selectivity. This review critically discusses the synergistic interactions between enzymatic hydrolysis and emerging extraction technologies, including high-intensity ultrasound, microwave-assisted extraction, pressurized liquid extraction, and supercritical fluid extraction. Particular emphasis is placed on the mechanisms by which hydrolytic enzymes disrupt plant cell wall structures and hydrolyze glycosidic bonds, promoting the release of bound phenolics and the formation of more bioactive aglycone derivatives. The effects of process parameters, matrix characteristics, and mass transfer phenomena on extraction performance are also critically examined. In addition, the role of green solvents, especially natural deep eutectic solvents and mixtures based on natural compounds, is explored regarding enzyme activity, extraction efficiency, and process sustainability. Hybrid and sequential extraction configurations are comparatively analyzed to identify technological advantages and operational trade-offs associated with process intensification. Beyond conventional descriptive approaches, this review provides an integrated engineering perspective on enzyme-assisted extraction systems by connecting enzymatic mechanisms, extraction technologies, solvent interactions, and sustainability aspects within a unified process framework. Overall, the findings highlight the potential of intensified enzyme-assisted extraction systems for sustainable valorization of agro-industrial residues into high-value functional ingredients while advancing greener and more efficient bioprocessing strategies.
Texture, rheological behaviour, and sensory perception are critical determinants of food quality, consumer acceptance, and processing performance. Conventional evaluation methods, including instrumental analyses and trained sensory panels, are labour-intensive, time-consuming, and often lack inter-laboratory reproducibility, limiting their application in rapid and scalable food quality assessment. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have transformed this field by enabling accurate, data-driven prediction of complex physicochemical and sensory attributes from heterogeneous datasets. This review critically examines AI-driven approaches for predicting food texture, rheology, and sensory characteristics, covering classical machine learning, deep learning, graph neural networks, transfer learning, foundation models, and explainable AI. Across the studies synthesised in this review, classical machine learning and gradient-boosting models achieved coefficients of determination of R² = 0.94–0.98 for rheological and compositional prediction tasks, convolutional and transformer-based deep learning architectures reached correlations of r = 0.91–0.97 for texture attributes derived from imaging data, and electronic sensing and multimodal fusion approaches achieved classification accuracies of 91–99
In today’s evolving market, traditional beverages such as coffee are undergoing significant transformations to align with contemporary consumption patterns. Fermentation has emerged as a powerful targeted intervention within the coffee production chain, strategically reshaping the metabolic profile of beans and creating unique sensory characteristics. However, the current trajectory extends beyond flavor, with an increasing emphasis on enhancing functionality and bioactivity. Achieving these refined profiles introduces new complexities, including the need for precise process monitoring, non-standard protocols, and the application of specific microbial inoculants during fermentation. Such multifaceted research, which involves numerous interacting variables, necessitates the integration of omics technologies to decode the underlying microbial and biochemical dynamics. This review examines the current literature on the fermentation-mediated modulation of the functional and bioactive properties of coffee using omics. The analysis illustrates how different fermentation methods and microbial strains influence these properties in distinct, and at times divergent, ways, yielding diverse compositional changes linked to potential health-promoting activities, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, anticancer, and antidiabetic activities, and cardioprotective effects. Targeted and untargeted metabolomics, metagenomics, and metabarcoding are the predominant techniques used to map these associations. There is a growing research focus on fermentation strategies designed not only to craft distinctive aroma profiles but also to engineer nutraceutical beverage experiences. This shift highlights the potential of directed fermentation to reposition coffee from a conventional stimulant to a functionally designed component of a health-conscious diet that promotes health.
Pleurotus ostreatus polysaccharides (POPs) are major structural components of the fungal cell wall and have attracted interest due to their potential bioactive and techno-functional properties as food additives. Although considerable attention has been given to their biological activities, an integrated overview of the effects of production, extraction, and purification strategies on specific polysaccharide yield, structure, and functionality remains insufficiently understood. Production strategies largely focus on maximizing polysaccharide bioaccumulation by either substrate modification or abiotic stress. Extraction technologies have evolved into advanced methods, such as ultrasound, enzymatic hydrolysis, microwaves, subcritical water, and supercritical fluids, to overcome the limitations of conventional extraction techniques, which have low extraction efficiency and pose a risk of structural damage to the POPs. This review aims to compare current production, extraction, and purification strategies and evaluates their effect on polysaccharide yield, structural characteristics, bioactivity, and techno-functional properties in food matrices. This work synthesizes the literature published between 2015 and 2025, identifies research gaps, and proposes future research directions to improve POPs production, extraction, and purification.
Ultrafine grinding (UFG) has emerged as an effective strategy for particle-scale regulation and interfacial activation, and has shown considerable engineering value in food powder processing, release of functional components, and value-added utilization of by-products. During size reduction to the micrometer scale, increases in specific surface area, elevation of surface energy, and microstructural reconstruction often occur simultaneously, thereby markedly affecting dissolution/leaching kinetics, dispersion stability, processing adaptability, and functional performance. However, the links among grinding methods, multi-scale breakage mechanisms, property evolution, and application outcomes remain insufficiently integrated because breakage kinetics, energy dissipation, multiphase flow–particle interactions, and particle agglomeration are highly coupled. In this context, this review focuses primarily on food materials, with traditional Chinese medicinal materials (TCMs) as a supplementary point of comparison, to summarize recent advances in UFG. First, based on the classification of dry and wet routes, various UFG approaches are reviewed with emphasis on their energy-transfer mechanisms, equipment characteristics, material-processing boundaries, and process differences from conventional equipment. Second, from the perspectives of micromechanics, energy consumption, and particle-size evolution, recent advances in fracture and energy theories, multiscale particle mechanics models, CFD–DEM coupling, and population balance modeling are summarized. Furthermore, the effects of UFG on powder morphology, particle-size distribution, flowability, hydration/solubility, and functional properties of food and TCMs are discussed, with particular attention to cell-wall disruption, release of bioactive constituents, structural reconstruction, and over-grinding effects. Finally, recent progress and future directions are reviewed for applications of UFG in enhanced bioactivity, synergistic modification, novel food development, value-added utilization of food by-products, and efficacy enhancement of TCM formulations. This review provides a systematic reference for mechanistic elucidation, model prediction, and engineering application of UFG in food systems.
