Journal summary 2021 from Editor in Chief

During 2021 our global community continued fighting the COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated individuals, families, countries, and economies all over the world. The vaccines that had been developed in 2020 allowed suppressing the spread of the pandemic during 2021. However, we are still fighting the virus and its mutants that continue to inflict illness and death. During 2021, more than 3.5 million people died and more than 200 million people got sick as a result of the pandemic. More than 90% of the population in parts of the world have already received at least one dose of vaccine and yet in other parts of the world, such as in many Africa counties, the level of vaccination is below 20%. We have therefore to remember that along with our efforts to reach a full economic and social recovery, our efforts should also be directed at attaining full vaccination of populations all over the world. During 2021 we have witnessed a slow but continuous renewal of teaching and research activities all over the world. During 2021 submission of manuscripts to AIMS Agriculture and Food continued to increase and a total of 320 manuscripts have been submitted. This is a new record that represents a 38% increase in submission from 2021. The impact of the pandemic on activities of researchers and scholars continued to adversely affect the pace of the peer-review process to which submitted manuscripts are subjected. The average processing time in 2021 was about 95 days, a significantly longer process time than what we would like to offer. Myself and the managing team of the journal are committed to do all that we can in order to enhance the pace and the efficiency of the review process in 2022. We hope that with the continuous return to full activity, our dedicated team of reviewers will be able to complete the review process faster than during the pandemic-impacted period of time. During 2021, our collective effort yielded a significant accomplishment and a total of 60 new papers have been published. We wish to be able to accept and publish a larger proportion of the submitted manuscript, however, we maintain our commitment to only publish those submissions that successfully pass the scrutiny of our review process and meet our quality criteria. Our journal is committed to a fair, thorough, effective, and relevant review process and we are dedicated to promoting and publishing manuscripts that carry high level of originality, scientific merits, and relevance. The papers that have been published in 2021 included 48 research papers and 7 review papers. We are very proud to have a very diverse population of published authors that come from all over the world. The journal is currently indexed in: AGRICOLA, AGRIS, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Web of Science and Scopus. Aims Agriculture and Food brings an integrated approach and view to a broad array of issues pertaining to agriculture and food. AIMS Agriculture and Food has been designed to present a unique scope that draws on the continuum spanning from agriculture through food production, processing and consumption. We hope to continue developing the journal's strength as a multidisciplinary platform that enables a productive dialogue between basic and applied disciplines that are relevant to the scope of the journal. The world continues to be affected by major adverse impacts of disrupt agriculture and food supply chains that challenge the availability of both raw materials and processed products all over the world. Our collective success in reducing waste generation in agricultural and food operations has been only to a very limited extent. New approaches are needed in order to meet these challenges and innovative new processing and preservation concepts and technologies will have to be developed and implemented in order to successfully meet these challenges. Success requires a focused and integrated multi-disciplinary effort. We invite authors from both developed and developing countries to utilize the platform that our journal offers as a stage where their thoughts, ideas, accomplishments, as well as challenges, will be presented, discussed, and published. On behalf of the editorial and managing team, I would like to thank the authors that have submitted their manuscripts to the journal in 2021 and to all the reviewers that contributed their time, efforts and expertise in reviewing the submitted manuscripts. On behalf of the Editorial Board and the managing team I would like to wish you a very healthy, productive and successful 2022.

Moshe Rosenberg, D.Sc., Editor in Chief

Professor and Specialist

Department of Food Science and Technology

University of California, Davis

Davis, CA 95616

U.S.A