Special Issue on the International Conference Iberdesh 2002: Process, Structure and Functionality

Over the years water management and foods has been a major topic in the Sub-programme XI Treatment and Conservation of Foods of the Ibero-American CYTED programme in Science and Technology. Since 1985 successive projects on intermediate moisture foods, combined methods technology and minimal processing have positioned the subject and researchers of the region at the forefront of scientific and technological advances. Dehydration is perhaps the oldest technology used by man to stabilize foods and a preferred way by nature to preserve life on earth (e.g., dry seeds). Drying is also a very important industrial operation accounting for 10–25% of the total energy used in manufacturing processworldwide. Sun-dryinghasbeenused for centuries virtually unchanged to preserve fruits, vegetables, meat and fish in developing countries establishing a huge market for traditional dried products. At the same time, food engineers are examining novel alternatives to make the process more energyand time-efficient, for example, using radiation sources often combined with conventional systems, to spur heat and mass transfer. Nevertheless, food dehydration goes beyond removing water fast and at low cost: it has to do with structure and functionality of materials as well. Recent trends in many areas of science and technology attempt to couple the process of water removal with desirable properties of the dry product. Biotechnologists are interested in protecting the activity of labile and expensive biomolecules in their transit to and during storage in the solid state. The pharmaceutical industry is concerned with the long-term efficacy and the controlled release of drugs in our bodies. Biologists and plant physiologists are making deep inroads in the understanding of the mechanisms of molecular protection and adaptation involved in drought resistance in plants and anhydrobiosis. Simultaneously, high-resolution, non-intrusive techniques for visualising and characterizing structures and methods to precisely measure physical properties in situ are becoming available. New concepts borrowed from food materials science, such as the rubbery-glass transition, find application in the interpretation of the structural and chemical stability of dried tissue foods and powders. Iberdesh 2002: Process, Structure and Functionality, an international conference held in Valencia (Spain) in September 2002, was intended from the outset to be an unorthodox meeting on the science of drying. It had as major objective to revisit the important subject of dehydration from a much wider perspective than usual and to explore with no limits possible avenues and opportunities for cross-fertilisation. Micro-structure, glass-transition, hydrodynamicmechanisms of transport, fractals, wetting, pharma products, resurrection plants, etc. are some of the keywords that accompany the papers presented as a vivid example of the wide scope of subjects covered. This special issue of the International Journal of Food Science and Technology includes the full text of all invited presentations at the meeting. As international coordinator of CYTED project XI.13 StructureProperty Relationships in Dehydration and Storage of Dried Foods my gratitude goes to the CYTED Programme and the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia for their logistic and financial support, to the Editorial Committee of the journal for the opportunity to achieve a widespread dissemination of the ideas discussed, and last but not least, to the invited lecturers who travelled long distances and submitted their manuscripts on time. We hope that the food technology community will appreciate the effort involved and enjoy the contents of this special issue.