The world is still undergoing a global pandemic. COVID-19 is a disease caused by a virus strain that began spreading in people in December 2019 or earlier. As I write this morning, June 20, 2020, there are 8,546,919 confirmed cases worldwide and 2,266,792 in the US with 120,906 fatal cases (US). The coronavirus has been a wake-up call to strengthen the global food system, according to research by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). The group says that global food production is incredibly efficient, and the world's farmers produce enough to feed the global population. However, currently, a quarter of the global population does not have regular access to sufficient and nutritious food. In addition to food supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, climate change is an ongoing threat to agriculture. Climate change is leading to increased frequency and severity of extreme climatic events, like droughts, heat waves, and floods. As IIASA researchers note, these extreme conditions are particularly damaging for agriculture with climate variability being responsible for around 30% of the annual fluctuations in worldwide agricultural yield. The group says that today's globalized food system consists of highly interconnected social, technical, financial, economic, and environmental subsystems characterized by complex trade networks. Shocks to the food system can lead to ripple effects in political and social systems. “Although harvests have been successful and food reserves are available, global food supply chain interruptions led to food shortages in some places because of lockdown measures,” writes the author of the commentary Franziska Gaupp, an IIASA researcher working jointly with the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) and Risk and Resilience (RISK) programs. “Products cannot be moved from farms to markets. Food is rotting in the fields as transport disruptions have made it impossible to move food from the farm to the consumer. At the same time, many people have lost their incomes and food has become unaffordable to them.” According to the IIASA research, not all shocks to the global food system are linked to agricultural productivity or climatic conditions. The vulnerability of the interconnected food system has become evident in recent months following the appearance of a global pandemic. Although it started as a health crisis, COVID-19 filtered through the political, social, economic, technological, and financial systems. Business interruptions have caused supply chain disruptions that are projected to contribute to food crises in many parts of the world. According to Gaupp's work, the current pandemic has revealed structural weaknesses in the food system. Little storage and just-in-time supply chains have increased economic efficiency but led to systemic instability. “There will likely be more shocks hitting our global food system in the future. We need global collaboration and transdisciplinary approaches to ensure that the food chains function even in moments of crises to prevent price spikes and to provide all people with safe access to food,” concludes Gaupp. For more information, see the IIASA Press Release at https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/200619-coronavirus-and-the-global-food-system.html This month highlights in the Journal include: Hot water treatment (HT) has proved to alleviate chilling injury (CI) in bell pepper and other Solanaceae species, this has been associated with the presence of metabolites such as sugars and polyamines, which protect the plasmatic membrane. However, according to these researchers, it is unknown if the phenolic compounds in bell pepper play a role in the chilling injury tolerance induced by the application of a hot water treatment. The aim of this study was to identify the specific phenolics associated with induced CI tolerance in bell pepper by hot water treatment (53°C, 1 to 3 min). The researchers found that a hot water treatment is a useful technology to induce chilling injury tolerance in bell pepper, and such tolerance is associated with the phenolic composition that may reduce the prevalence of oxidative stress during storage under chilling injury conditions. Phenolics may be useful to detect early stages of heat and chilling injuries in bell pepper and prevent the negative effect of stress even before harvest and during commercial storage. Additionally, the phenolics associated with chilling injury tolerance may be used as markers in breeding programs to create new chilling resistant cultivars. P 2080–2089 Chitosan and whey protein are usually used to prepare edible films for food preservation. However, the composite film composed of the two components does not yield satisfactory properties for chestnut preservation. These researchers added nano-cellulose and cinnamaldehyde to chitosan and whey protein, creating a new composite film with strong water retention, bacteriostatic, and mechanical properties. The results indicated that the film clearly inhibited the growth of E. coli, S. aureus, and Chinese chestnut fungus, destroying the mycelial structure of the fungus. In addition, coating effectively reduced the weight loss, mildew rate, and calcification index during 16 days of storage of chestnuts at 25°C. P 2114–2123 Nuña bean, also known as “popping” bean, belongs to the group of common beans. Originating in the Andean mountains, nuña bean is an important food crop in several South American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, where it is consumed primarily as a snack. Nuña beans are highly nutritious and have a distinctive nutty flavor, which makes them potentially desirable ingredients in food applications, such as extruded snacks. These researchers evaluated the performance of whole seed nuña bean flour during extrusion cooking. Expansion characteristics of whole nuña bean flour were investigated using a twin-screw extruder. The moisture content and screw speed were found to have the most significant impact on the expansion rate. Nuña bean flour exhibited good expansion properties at relatively low temperatures, which highlights its potential for use in extruded food applications like nutritious snacks. P 2134–2142 The combination of enzymolysis of compound enzyme, oxidation of sodium hypochlorite, and cationic etherification of 3-chloro-2-hydroxypropyl trimethyl ammonium chloride was selected for the functionalization of rice starch (RS) to enhance its functionality. The researchers document that oxidation and etherification could improve the acid and alkali resistance of rice starch and enhance its thermal stability. Cationic oxidized microporous rice starch as an adsorbent, slow-release agent, and flocculant can be used in foods, medicines, pesticides, papermaking, wastewater treatment, and other applications due to its abundant micropores, anionic groups, and cationic groups as well as small particle size and narrow size range. P 2041–2049 Hypsizygus marmoreus is a group of edible mushrooms found in Asia and Northern Europe. These researchers compared the phenolics, antioxidant activities, and antiproliferative properties of brown Hypsizygus marmoreus (brown HM) and white Hypsizygus marmoreus (white HM). The results showed that the contents of catechin, gallic acid, and protocatechuic acid of brown HM were higher than those of white HM. The study indicates that brown HM afforded better antioxidant and antiproliferative activities than white HM and laid the foundation for potential application of Hypsizygus marmoreus as source of nutraceuticals and functional food products. P 2227–2235 Phthalic acid esters (PAEs) are widely used in the food industry as plasticizers in packaging materials. However, PAEs are environmental endocrine disruptors with reproductive toxicity and teratogenic carcinogenicity that do not degrade easily in the natural environment. These researchers present a simple example of applying a migration model to evaluate the migration behaviors of PAEs in food packaging materials along with their hazardous properties. They say it can serve as a valuable reference for further research on the migration of food packing materials. P 2105–2113 Phytosterol glycosides (PGs), comprising both acylated steryl glycosides (ASGs) and steryl glycosides (SGs), are active ingredients with benefits for human use. These researchers aimed to optimize the silica-gel adsorption technique for the extraction of PGs from soybean lecithin powder, which contains 5 to 10% of these glycolipids. The research lays a theoretical foundation for the optimization of the industrial production of phytosterol glycosides and the comprehensive utilization of lecithin resources. P 1971–7982 Pseudostellaria heterophylla is a very popular traditional Chinese medicine herb, also called “Taizishen.” Discrimination of P. heterophylla from different regions is critical for ensuring the effectiveness of their use. These researchers established a model extracted by competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) to determine the rapid authentication of this herb from different regions. According to the results, the researchers concluded that the demonstrated method may be used to distinguish the traditional Chinese medicine from those from different places of origin and powders with similar appearance. P 2004–2009 James Giese, jhgiese@gmail.com