Vacuum technology has become one of the indispensable technologies not only for industrial applications but also for food-related fields such as pharmaceuticals, instant foods, freeze-dried products, gas barrier membranes, and sterilization. Through the introduction of research on the application of vacuum technology to the food field, this special issue aims to promote understanding of vacuum technology in our daily lives and to help realize a society that moves toward further food safety and food loss reduction in the future.

In the vacuum freeze drying process, four technologies are important : freezing, drying, antioxidant treatment and packaging, the first two of which constitute its core technologies. Freezing concerns its rate and temperature, while drying necessitates attention to cold trap temperature and vacuum degree.

Plasma-based ion implantation is fundamentally a three-dimensional ion implantation technique that utilizes plasma as its foundation. It has been employed for surface modification of industrial and medical materials. This paper presents the research outcomes of our group, focusing on the potential utilization of plasma-based ion implantation as a technology for food sterilization and processing. The application of plasma technology to food sterilization and processing is expected to produce safe and secure food products in the food industry and foster the development of new food items.

In recent years, low-temperature cooking methods using vacuum technology have been attracting attention. Vacuum cooking is a method in which food is packaged under reduced pressure and cooked at low temperatures. Vacuum frying is a cooking method in which food is fried in cooking oil at a lower temperature than usual under a high vacuum.

In the vacuum cooking method, vacuum packaging preserves flavor and taste and reduces the loss of water-soluble ingredients. Low-temperature cooking results in less weight loss of meat, suppresses loss of water-soluble components, and tenderizes the meat. In the vacuum frying method, excellent characteristics such as suppression of acrylamide formation, suppression of coloration due to suppression of aminocarbonyl reaction, suppression of lipid oxidation, suppression of oxidation, and suppression of vitamin C loss were confirmed.

It is very important to reduce the loss of fresh produce as it experiences the highest loss during distribution than other agricultural products and processed foods. Thus, we discuss the current technologies used for distribution of fresh produce to minimize the mass and quality loss of fresh produce. Moreover, packaging plays an essential role in distribution technologies. Therefore, in this paper, we also examined and introduced the requirement and examples of packaging for fresh produce.