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[...]currently, over 820 million people in the world are hungry, while a third of the food produced is lost or wasted, with negative implications on economic, social and environmental conditions at a global level, highlighting how different production, educational campaigns and consumption approaches are needed [1,2]. According to the Agenda, in fact, the sustainable cropping systems, on the one hand, have to increase productivity and production, but on the other, they should reduce the negative social and environmental impacts, thanks also to a sustainable changes in consumers’ choices. [...]the aim of this Special Issue has been to collect scientific studies worldwide dealing with the two main topics of the “ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns” goal: (1) the adoption of sustainable production patterns in the agriculture sector; (2) the study of consumers’ behavior towards sustainable food products. In more detail, the authors highlight how the landraces of durum wheat are able to valorize the marginal areas of southern Italy and especially organic agricultural systems thanks to their high resistance/tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress and the capacity to use limited resources. [...]the adoption of ancient varieties and landraces allows entrepreneurs to obtain higher incomes than with conventional ones, as consumers are increasingly willing to pay a premium price. Over recent years, in fact, growing consumer interest towards organic, healthy and local products and short supply chains has been observed as, during their purchasing decisions, they attach increasing importance to the reduction of environmental impacts and transportation emissions but also to the socio-economic conditions of local economies. [...]in order to introduce more sustainable products or processes in agri-food chains, it appears necessary to understand the consumers’ perception and behavior.

Nowadays, more and more consumers show a growing interest in healthy food products that may help to maintain or improve human health, such as honey. Honey has always represented a fundamental component of traditional medicine in many world cultures. However, only thanks to several studies carried out in the last years, its use is considered as an alternative and complementary medicine, namely apitherapy. In this way, honey is recognized increasingly by consumers not only as a natural alternative to refined sugar but as healthy food, as shown by determining an increase of its consumption worldwide. This study aims to explore the consumers’ determinants of honey consumption, trying to understand whether, and how much, therapeutic properties of honey affect the Italian consumers’ choices. The findings of this study, although exploratory, provide information on which quality characteristics influence honey consumption in Italy, revealing that, among quality attributes, the therapeutic properties of honey play an important role in affecting consumers’ behavior, followed by income, variety and taste. This could have some implications for producers and marketers as this information could contribute to defining effective marketing strategies for communicating to consumers the quality attributes of honey and its therapeutic benefits.

This paper presents an analysis of the operational characteristics of three-phase AC–DC matrix converters, which operate as rectifiers but possess a range of additional capabilities. These include the ability to reverse the power flow, control the input power factor, and generate a multilevel output voltage. The analysis yields a modulation strategy that minimizes switching losses. The proposed modulation strategy is compared with seven well-known space vector modulation strategies in terms of efficiency and distortion of input and output current. The performance is experimentally validated.

Recently, mobile health and mobile apps have been proposed as a potential tool to improve different outcomes (eg, daily steps, blood glucose) in both people with and without chronic conditions. In particular, healthy people could benefit from these tools by improving health variables and for prevention. Previous evidence investigated different types of health interventions adopting apps in various settings and populations, but evidence of their effectiveness is still unclear. The aim was to assess the effectiveness of mobile apps in improving health variables (eg, daily steps, maximal aerobic capacity) in healthy adults, involving an intervention regarding physical activity, diet, or their combination thereof. Evidence would suggest if apps could be effectively adopted in health interventions aiming toward prevention. A systematic review was performed using Medline via PubMed, Cochrane Library-CENTRAL, and Embase. Only randomized controlled trials comparing the same intervention provided with and without a mobile app or a treatment and a mobile app compared with the treatment only were included in this systematic review. The Risk of Bias tool 2.0 was used to assess the risk of bias, and the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation) was adopted for rating the certainty of evidence. Considering studies up to June 2025, only 2 studies were included in the review of mobile apps for physical activity, and none were included for mobile apps for diet and none for mobile apps for physical activity and diet combined. The quality of evidence of the 2 studies included was low due to a high risk of bias, several missing data, and deviation from the original interventions, suggesting a scarce rigor in the methodology adopted. Therefore, mobile apps' effectiveness in improving diet, physical activity, or their combination cannot be assessed. Despite the widespread use of mobile apps for health and the large number of relative publications, the results of this systematic review did not allow us to ascertain the effectiveness of mobile apps for health, but they provided fundamental insights for future research. Hence, it is not possible to state if apps for health might be used as supporting tools for health interventions aiming toward prevention and health improvements in healthy people. There is an urgent need to develop stronger evidence of apps' effectiveness in addressing different populations and types of interventions for different health domains.

The literature suggests that consumers who purchase local foods tend to maintain more sustainable and healthier diets and are more likely to engage in fitter lifestyles. While this holds true for many local food products sold through short supply chains (such as eggs, milk, fruits, and vegetables), the role of a widely debated food like local red meat remains unclear. Specifically, it is uncertain whether health-related attitudes and justifications for meat consumption vary based on the frequency of red meat consumption among consumers of local red meat. This study aims to examine the influence of health attitudes and meat attachment on local red meat consumption among Italian consumers, differentiating between those who consume red meat within and those who exceed the World Health Organization's recommended nutritional guidelines. A stratified sample of 1135 Italian red meat consumers responsible for household food purchases was used for this analysis. To assess the data, a logistic regression model with robust standard errors was applied. The findings indicate that health attitudes drive consumer behaviour regardless of the overall quantity of meat consumed. However, only consumers with low meat consumption tend to justify their consumption of local red meat, while justifications for meat consumption decrease as meat intake increases. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the local red meat market and provides valuable insights for companies to tailor their marketing strategies and product value propositions to consumer perceptions. Additionally, the findings can inform policymakers in designing interventions aimed at reducing excessive meat consumption.

Tokamaks are a very promising option to exploit nuclear fusion as a programmable and safe energy source. A very critical issue for the practical use of tokamaks consists of the power flow required to initiate and sustain the fusion process, in particular in the poloidal field coils. This flow can be managed by introducing a DC energy storage based on supercapacitors. Because such storage may be the most expensive and largest part of the poloidal power supply system, an excessive size would cancel its potential advantages. This paper presents innovative strategies to optimize the DC storage in poloidal power supply systems. The proposed solution involves the sharing of the DC storage between different coil circuits. The study is supported by novel analytical formulas and by a circuital model developed for this application. The obtained results show that this method and the related algorithms can noticeably reduce the overall size of the storage and the power exchange with the grid, providing a practical contribution toward the feasibility and the effectiveness of nuclear fusion systems.

The production of energy from renewable sources is a form of energy production that has less impact on the environment than the traditional one. For the farmer this new form of production represents an opportunity, especially for the economic benefits that can produce, both in terms of the incentives provided by the public operator and for higher revenues, deriving from the sale of energy back to the grid and/or the savings generated by self-consumed energy, that help to increase the farmer’s income. In this paper, we analyzed a case study of a farm that has realized a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system on a greenhouse. In particular, firstly the farm profitability has been estimated and subsequently, in order to assess the efficiency of the energy policy adopted by the Second Conto Energia in Italy, the minimum incentive tariff at which the entrepreneur has an economic advantage to realize a PV system has been determined. Results show that PV system relegates to a marginal role the cultivation of agricultural products compared to energy production and that government PV remuneration policies far outweigh the minimum threshold that makes the investment advantageous.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upset everyone's normal daily activities, generating psychiatric disorders and changing consumers' preferences. Among others, the agri-food sector has experienced strong changes and, during the lockdown period, Italian consumers modified their purchasing habits in response to the fear and uncertainty generated by the spread of the virus. In order to find out the main consequences of the shock suffered during the period and to understand which factors have affected purchasing choices, an online survey was conducted on 286 Italian consumers. The results show that ethnocentrism has been the factor that most has influenced consumers' behavior during the lockdown period and that consumers will continue to prefer national agri-food products when pandemic will be over, constituting a deep change to future eating habits.

Local products and their distribution through short supply chains play a key role in the sustainable development of many rural areas, as affirmed by the 2030 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Agenda. Moreover, in the last years, more and more consumers have shown a specific interest towards local production, pushed by the need for healthy eating, protecting the environment, and boosting the local economy. However, the cultivation of local fruit varieties or ecotypes has considerably decreased in the last decades because of their low production potential. As a result, many farmers have been forced to replace local orchards with few worldwide grown cultivars, causing a loss of genetic agrobiodiversity. For instance, in Italy, the loquat market is composed of imported cultivars and local grown autochthonous fruits (ecotype). Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the chemical–physical and sensory qualities, as well as the determinants of Italian consumer preference towards local ecotype of loquat fruit compared to imported varieties. Results show that local ecotypes result in excellent physico-chemical and sensory attributes, and that place of purchase and taste are the most important factors influencing consumers’ preference towards local loquats. Therefore, the cultivation of loquat ecotypes, together with effective marketing strategies, could increase the competitiveness of certain Italian rural areas, where this crop has always played a significant role in the economy.

Thanks to national energy policies, over recent years the Italian photovoltaic (PV) sector has undergone an extraordinary growth, also affecting the primary sector. In this context, Mediterranean greenhouses are well-adapted to photovoltaic systems because they represent one of the most energy-intensive sectors in agriculture. The Italian feed-in scheme ended at the beginning of 2013, making it necessary to investigate the feasibility of photovoltaic systems devoid of any electricity production-related incentives. In this paper, production cost and profitability analyses of photovoltaic electricity have been conducted, considering Mediterranean solar greenhouses in which, thanks to net metering, all the electricity produced by photovoltaic panels is self-consumed. Our results showed that grid parity is already reached for Sicilian PV systems with a capacity greater than 50 kW. Moreover, net present value, internal rate of return and discounted payback time all demonstrate the high economic convenience of all the photovoltaic investments analyzed, due to the huge savings on energy expenditures.