The Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality is the Open Access journal of the German Society for Quality Research on Plant Foods and the Section Applied Botany of the German Society for Plant Sciences (DBG). It provides a platform for scientists to disseminate recent results of applied plant research in plant physiology and plant ecology, plant biotechnology, plant cultivation, phytomedicine, plant nutrition, plant stress and resistance, plant microbiology, plant analysis (including -omics techniques), and plant food chemistry. The articles have a clear focus on botanical and plant quality aspects and contain new and innovative information based on state-of-the-art methodologies.

image of a side walk, bushes and trees in a city

Special Section 2024: Applied botany in urban areas - Mitigation of climate change

NEW DEADLINE! Open for submission until 31 May 2024

“Amid the air pollution, chemical pesticides and herbicides, unnatural and adverse conditions, and other hazards of the cities, trees and plants are finding survival extremely difficult.” H.L. Li observed half a century ago, when he spoke of the need for Urban Botany [Li, 1969].

Botany has come a long way since then, especially when it comes to growing plants for the production of raw materials. However, plants in urban areas do not usually provide food, feed or raw materials. Nevertheless, they do provide a wide range of other ecosystem services to urban populations. To highlight what these might be and how they can be improved, we are proud to announce next year's special Section and invite you all to contribute to our understanding and further the development of green cities.

To support us in this endeavour, we welcome Prof. Petra Schneider as a guest editor. She is Professor for International Water Management and Head of the working group Ecological Engineering and will broaden our usual scope to topics on the interface between engineering and botany.

We welcome original research articles as well as reviews.  For suitable topics, see this list.

Current content

image of tomato fruit varieties

Bioactive compounds in 28 native tomato accessions from southeast Mexico

by Kati Medina-Dzul, Luis Latournerie-Moreno, Esaú Ruiz-Sánchez, Juan Díaz-Mayo, Genny Ortiz-Salazar

The diverse populations of native tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) in Mexico have great potential for breeding and nutraceutical benefits, but information on their secondary metabolites is scarce. Here we quantified bioactive compounds with nutraceutical potential in 28 native tomato accessions across southeastern Mexico. Plants were grown from seeds, transplanted to fields in a completely randomized block design with three replications of each accession and assessed for antioxidant activity, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, ß-carotene, lycopene, and other carotenoids. The results revealed significant differences in these variables among accessions. Accessions Y129 ....   read more