Food factories seek the applications of natural products, green feedstock, and eco-friendly processes, which minimize impacts on the properties of food products, the environment, and health. This has led to an increased demand for safe and sustainable green solvents, such as supercritical carbon dioxide, edible oils, biocompatible ionic liquids, and deep eutectic solvents (DESs), which can be involved in many food industries. Considering the easier preparation process, low cost, potential biodegradability, and negligible toxicity, green solvents, especially DESs, named the next generation of green solvents, are recognized as attractive substitutes for traditional solvents with an explosion of publications in target compound extractions, chemistry reaction, fast analysis, food packaging, and food formulation designs, etc. To promote green solvent applications for sustainable food industries, the application cases and the advantages and limitations of implementing green solvents in the food industry need to be clarified, including the perspectives, research gaps, and potentialities.

This Research Topic aims to collect articles about the progress in applying these green solvents (especially DESs) toward extraction and separation of target compounds or undesired molecules, the development of green chemistry reaction medium, synthesis of food packaging materials, the development of formulations with enhanced ingredient solubility, stability and bioavailability, analysis and determination of specific analytes in food samples, safety as food ingredients or owing to residue, and many other applications.

Original research and reviews with high quality that address the applications of green solvents, especially DESs and ionic liquids for the sustainable food industry are highly welcome, including but not limited to the following themes:
- New green items for building eco-friendly processes to extract target biomolecules (i.e., carotenoids, phenolic compounds) or undesired molecules (i.e., pesticides).
- Development of new separation systems (i.e., DES with tunable hydrophobicity induced by CO₂ for target compound separation).
- Improvement in the solubility and stability of target food ingredients using green solvents.
- Versatile delivery systems for different routes (i.e., oral administration (digestion) and transdermal) with enhanced bioavailability of bioactivity compounds.
- Preparation of biodegradable food packaging materials with excellent properties, i.e., strong antimicrobial and antioxidant activities.
- Biocompatible reaction mediums with or without enzyme (i.e., enzymatic esterification).
- Analysis and determination of specific analytes in food samples (i.e., heavy metals, pesticides, food additives) for food safety.
- Safety evaluation of green solvents as food ingredients or owing to residue.

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Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems

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