40th BANGKOK International Conference on Research in Agriculture & Food Engineering: RAFE-27

Call for Papers

Full Articles/ Reviews/ Shorts Papers/ Abstracts are welcomed in the following research fields:

1. Agricultural Engineering

These topics focus primarily on the "on-farm" engineering required to produce raw biological materials efficiently and sustainably.

Power, Machinery, and Precision Agriculture

• Farm Power Sources: Internal combustion engines, electric drives, and renewable energy integration (solar and biomass) for farm operations.

• Tillage and Traction Mechanics: Soil-tool dynamics, draft requirements, compaction mitigation, and tire-soil interactions.

• Crop Harvesting and Threshing Machinery: Design and optimization of combine harvesters, fruit pickers, and forage equipment.

• Precision Agriculture Technologies: GPS/GNSS guided machinery, variable rate technology (VRT), and yield mapping.

• Agricultural Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): Autonomous tractors, drone-based multispectral crop monitoring, and robotic weeding.

Soil and Water Engineering

• Irrigation System Design: Micro-irrigation (drip and sprinkler), surface irrigation hydraulics, and automated scheduling using soil moisture sensors.

• Agricultural Drainage: Subsurface and surface drainage design to manage salinity and waterlogging.

• Soil Erosion and Conservation: Hydrological modeling, watershed management, and engineering structures (terraces, check dams) for sediment control.

• Groundwater Hydrology: Aquifer recharge, pumping hydraulics, and sustainable water table management.

Protected Cultivation and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)

• Greenhouse Engineering: Structural design, glazing materials, and automated HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems.

• Hydroponics, Aquaponics, and Aeroponics: Soilless culture system engineering, nutrient solution delivery, and monitoring.

• Vertical Farming: Indoor lighting optimization (LED recipes), multi-tier space utilization, and closed-loop resource management.

2. Food Engineering 

These topics deal with the transformation of raw agricultural materials into safe, nutritious, and consumer-ready food products.

Unit Operations in Food Processing

• Ambient Temperature Processing: Mechanical size reduction (milling, grinding), mixing, homogenization, and mechanical separation (centrifugation, filtration, expression).

• Thermal Processing by Heat Application: Pasteurization, sterilization (canning, UHT), baking, roasting, and frying mechanics.

• Thermal Processing by Heat Removal: Chilling, freezing kinetics, freeze concentration, and cold storage engineering.

• Mass Transfer Operations: Dehydration/drying kinetics, evaporation, distillation, and solvent extraction.

Advanced and Non-Thermal Processing Technologies

• High-Pressure Processing (HPP): Isostatic pressure inactivation of microorganisms and enzymes.

• Pulsed Electric Fields (PEF) and Ultrasound: Cell membrane permeabilization for extraction enhancement and non-thermal pasteurization.

• Irradiation and Cold Plasma: Decontamination of food surfaces using ionizing radiation or ionized gases.

• Microwave and Ohmic Heating: Volumetric and electro-heating technologies for rapid, uniform thermal processing.

Food Rheology, Texturometry, and Physical Properties

• Fluid Rheology: Newtonian and non-Newtonian behavior of liquid foods, viscosity modeling, and pipe flow hydraulics.

• Viscoelasticity and Texture: Texture Profile Analysis (TPA) of solid/semi-solid foods and deformation mechanics.

• Thermodynamic and Transport Properties: Thermal conductivity, diffusivity, and water activity ($a_w$) relationships in food matrices.

3. Interrelated and Convergent Topics

These domains represent the critical bridge where agriculture and food engineering overlap, ensuring quality preservation, safety, and sustainability from field to fork.

Post-Harvest Technology and Primary Processing

• Cleaning, Sorting, and Grading: Machine vision systems, optical sorters, and aerodynamic separation of harvested crops.

• Grain Storage Engineering: Silo design, psychrometrics of grain drying, aeration systems, and pest management via controlled atmospheres.

• Perishable Storage: Cold chain logistics, Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), and Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage for fresh produce.

Food Packaging Engineering and Material Science

• Barrier Properties: Permeability of packaging films to oxygen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide.

• Active and Intelligent Packaging: Antimicrobial scavenging films, time-temperature indicators (TTIs), and freshness sensors.

• Sustainable Packaging: Biodegradable polymers, edible coatings, and life-cycle assessments of packaging materials.

Food Safety, Quality Engineering, and Traceability

• HACCP and Hygienic Design: Engineering of sanitary processing equipment, Clean-In-Place (CIP) systems, and biofilm prevention.

• Biosensors and Rapid Detection: Development of electrochemical and optical biosensors for pathogens, toxins, and adulterants.

• Digital Traceability: Blockchain integration, RFID tracking, and IoT-driven cold chain monitoring.

By-Product Utilization, Waste Management, and Bioenergy

• Agricultural Waste Valorization: Extraction of bioactive compounds, dietary fibers, and proteins from processing waste.

• Anaerobic Digestion: Biogas plant design, methane optimization, and digestate management from farm and food waste.

• Biofuels and Biochemicals: Thermochemical conversion (pyrolysis, gasification) of biomass and enzymatic conversion to bioethanol.

Bioprocess Engineering and Fermentation Technology

• Bioreactor Design: Kinetics of microbial growth, scale-up parameters, agitation, and aeration in submerged and solid-state fermentation.

• Downstream Processing: Isolation and purification of enzymes, organic acids, and cultured proteins (cellular agriculture).

• Synthetic Biology in Food: Engineering microbes for alternative protein production and precision fermentation