The development of novel reliable methodologies that allow the control, assessment, and prediction of the characteristics of food products is a field under expansion nowadays, especially those that allow their characterization, classification, and authentication. Industry is increasingly interested in fast-response and low-cost methods, to be used for the detection of adulterations or contamination of the products (either during or after their production), or to assess the guarantees of quality control standards.

Current approaches for quality control are shifting from compound-oriented to pattern-oriented strategies, the former focusing on the identification of few specific compounds, while the latter targeting the extraction of a global fingerprint of all the compounds present in the sample. Thus, fingerprinting techniques require the use of an analytical method that can simultaneously detect a large spectrum of compounds and provide comprehensive information of the sample, in combination with chemometric tools that allow the interpretation and extraction of meaningful data from the complex readings.

In this regards, this special issue aims to cover the advances in separation and sensing technologies for fast, reliable, and affordable characterization, classification, and authentication of food samples based on their analytical fingerprints.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Fingerprinting approaches aimed at food quality, authenticity, and provenance assessment
• Suitable procedures and novel methodologies for fingerprinting classification of foodstuffs
• Chromatography and spectroscopy related methodologies for identification of key (bio)markers and/or detection of undesired compounds and contaminants
• Application of NIR and MIR to food analysis
• Application of electronic tongues and electronic noses towards food analysis
• DNA fingerprinting
• Usage of chemometrics in fingerprinting for food analysis