Iraq has faced significant security challenges due to wars and local conflicts over the past decades that have hindered its economic growth. These challenges have at times overshadowed the issue of a significant increase in families at risk of food insecurity in the country, exacerbated by poverty and scarcity of domestic production. To reduce the impacts of these challenges, successive governments have resorted to implementing many agri-food policies to encourage domestic production through subsidising the key crops on one hand, and to make food affordable for all citizens through providing the main staple food commodities at low prices through a public distribution system PDS policy on another hand. However, these policies have several negative consequences. They have burdened the economy of the country, putting the country fiscal budget under additional pressure. Moreover, the policy of production subsidies has had a significant impact on agricultural water demand, in what is a water scarce country. This research sheds the light on the motivations that stand behind these policies, as well as providing a clearer vision of the consequences of such policies, in terms of food self-sufficiency, equity, and water scarcity. Iraq's agri-food policies can be considered as a good example of highly distortionary policies that could prevent the country from achieving its goals and may even lead to greater burdens on the economy of the country. Iraq's economy has become less diversified during the last decade and more dependent on oil revenues than ever. Yet the oil sector employs only 1 % of the workforce in Iraq, so imposing inefficient policies to non-oil economic sectors such as agriculture is likely to have a greater impact on the Iraqi population than might have been anticipated (Sommer-Houdeville, 2017). This thesis explains the distortions caused by several of the most important food­related subsidies and assesses their performances. There are many aspects that need to be looked at accurately and in several respects. For example, particularly in a water-scarce country such as Iraq, increasing food production can improve food security but at the expense of water security. Conversely, relying on food imports can make the country less food secure, yet it might have an invisible positive impact as the embedded water in this importing food can play a key role to tackle domestic water shortages. According to Godfray et al., (2010) government investment in food production particularly in a lower-income country would have further impacts on increasing the competition for input resources such as water, land, and energy, which in the end might affect the food system itself. Iraq is striving for food security but there are no easy solutions. Subsidies have been used to promote food production and food affordability, hence ensure food security, yet at what cost to the country's economy and environment? The overarching aim of this study is to explain and assess the distortions caused by agri-food policies adopted by successive Iraqi governments. First, a careful assessment of the main agri-food policies adopted by the Iraqi government during the last two decades is undertaken. Then three interlinked research questions are answered. First, how does the government's current crop production subsidy policy affect farmers' crop choices and the profitability of their farming enterprises. This is achieved by measuring farmers' social and private profitability using a policy analysis matrix model, PAM. Four key crops are considered: wheat, barley, maize and rice. Primary data was collected, using a household survey of 155 farm households in Wasit governorate located in central of lraq, conducted in January 2017. The second research question asks the extent to which the crop production subsidy policy distorts demand for water in the agricultural sector. The water trade-offs between domestic production and imports are then considered using the concept of "virtual water" embedded in the imported crop. The third research question asks what the impact on inequality has been of the government's policy of subsidising all household consumption. The central message from this thesis is that there are no easy solutions for a country such as Iraq, given that the government must make a choice between growing a greater share of its staples, at a high cost in terms of water use and subsidies, and importing crops, which would reduce pressure on water demand and government finances, but reduce food security. This is particularly pertinent given how vulnerable food-importing countries are to price shocks, as evidenced by the food crisis of 2008, felt across the globe, a direct consequence of the harvest failure in Australia, a key grain exporting country. However, this thesis also demonstrates that better targeting of subsidies would lead to more equitable and efficient outcomes with respect to food security.

The emergence of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus concept following the 2011 Bonn Nexus Conference has resulted in a change to the way we perceive our natural resources. Global pressures such as climate change, and population growth have highlighted the fragility of our WEF systems, necessitating integrated solutions across multiple scales and levels. Whilst a number of frameworks and analytical tools have been developed since 2011, a comprehensive WEF nexus tool remains elusive, hindered in part by our limited data and understanding of the interdependencies and connections across the WEF systems. To achieve this, the community of academics, practitioners and policy-makers invested in WEF nexus research are addressing several critical areas that currently remain as barriers. Firstly, the plurality of scales (e.g., spatial, temporal, institutional, jurisdictional) necessitates a more comprehensive effort to assess interdependencies between water, energy and food, from household to institutional and national levels. Secondly, and closely related to scale, a lack of available data often hinders our ability to quantify physical stocks and flows of resources. In this paper, we elucidate many of the challenges that have arisen across nexus research, including the impact of multiple scales in operation across the nexus, and concomitantly, what impact these scales have on data accessibility. We review some of the critical frameworks and tools that are applied by nexus researchers and discuss some of the steps required to develop from nexus thinking to an operationalizable concept, with a consistent focus on scale and data availability.

Rapidly increasing populations coupled with increased food demand requires either an expansion of agriculturalland or sufficient production gains from current resources. However, in a changing world, reduced wateravailability might undermine improvements in crop and grass productivity and may disproportionately affectdifferent parts of the world. Using multi-model studies, the potential trends, risks and uncertainties to land useand land availability that may arise from reductions in water availability are examined here. In addition, theimpacts of different policy interventions on pressures from emerging risks are examined.Results indicate that globally, approximately 11% and 10% of current crop- and grass-lands could be vul-nerable to reduction in water availability and may lose some productive capacity, with Africa and the MiddleEast, China, Europe and Asia particularly at risk. While uncertainties remain, reduction in agricultural land areaassociated with dietary changes (reduction of food waste and decreased meat consumption) offers the greatestbuffer against land loss and food insecurity.

The aim of this study is to use ComBase to determine the relative effects of temperature, pH, and water activity in the inactivation rates of Salmonella enterica in a range of foods. This is performed to determine whether any of the above factors have a dominant effect on survival. The inactivation rates of Salmonella were obtained from original raw data in the ComBase browser and from complete ComBase data for Salmonella. A total of 972 data of different types of food systems and data of individual types of food from ComBase were analysed. Over the range of 0–90°C, the z values calculated for the food data is 14°C. At 0–46°C relevant to intermediate moisture foods (IMF), the z values for the food data was 22°C, indicating a moderate effect of temperature. The z value for inactivation at 47–90°C was 11°C, indicating that temperature has an important effect on survival. This study shows that the effect of temperature is clearer at high temperatures than in the low temperature region. It suggests that the inactivation of Salmonella in food systems is slightly dominated by temperature and that the pH and aw levels appear to be less influential.

The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus is a dynamic and complex system, in which the resources of water, energy, and food are inextricably linked. The system faces a number of threats including man-made hazards, e.g. overpopulation, urbanisation, ageing population, terrorism and geopolitical upheaval, and natural hazards such as climate change and extreme weather events. General indicators for the WEF nexus provide information on current access and availability of water, energy and food to a population. However, in industrialised nations such as the UK, such information is often masked by the consistently high access and availability of WEF resources. This paper proposes a composite WEF resilience index formed by aggregating two sets of indicators: one representing the availability level of WEF resources in terms of three WEF sectors; and the other representing population access to the resources at the household level. The WEF availability and the household accessibility indicators were calculated separately within the water, energy, food, and household sectors. Within each sector, an Analytical Hierarchical Process was used for weighting sub-indicators based on experts’ evaluation of the relative importance among the sub-indicators. This allowed us to synthesize individual opinions using expertise level in a group decision-making framework. A pilot study was performed on the UK WEF nexus to measure resilience in recent times. This prototype composite index can be used for exploring the resilience of the WEF systems to shocks and changes in the presence of high WEF access and availability.

Because many common foods are emulsions (mayonnaise, coffee creamers, salad dressing, etc.), a better understanding of lipid oxidation mechanisms in these systems is crucial for the formulation, production, and storage of the relevant consumer products. A research body has focused on the microstructural and oxidative stability of protein-stabilized oil-in-water emulsions that are structurally similar to innovative products that have been recently developed by the food industry (e.g., non-dairy creams, vegetable fat spreads, etc.) This review presents recent findings about the factors that determine the development of lipid oxidation in emulsions where proteins constitute the stabilizing interface. Emphasis is given to “endogenous” factors, such as those of compositional (e.g., protein/lipid phases, pH, presence of transition metals) or processing (e.g., temperature, droplet size) nature. Improved knowledge of the conditions that favor the oxidative protection of protein in emulsions can lead to their optimized use as food ingredients and thereby improve the organoleptic and nutritional value of the related products.

Dehydration is one of the oldest food processing operations. It continues to be extensively employed today, and all indications point to its continued use in the foreseeable future. There are several dehydration techniques available for use in domestic and commercial practice. The main objective of this thesis is to focus on novel and less studied variants of two specific dehydrating methods: 1. Osmotic dehydration and 2. Frying. Osmotic dehydration is a natural process where water loss occurs by osmosis when food is brought into contact with a concentrated salt or sugar solution. Although this process consumes lower energy than other drying methods - which predominantly involve supplying the necessary latent heat for water evaporation from the food - a key problem is the high salt/sugar uptake which potentially poses health issues. In this thesis, a novel variant of osmotic dehydration called post-dipping dehydration – has been developed and studied. The technique involves dipping, say, potato slices, briefly in an osmotic solution, withdrawing it and allowing the water released to evaporate and/or drain under ambient conditions. The aim is to promote water loss just as in osmotic dehydration, but at the same time, minimize the uptake of the osmotic solute. The effects of osmotic medium concentration and dipping time on the water loss were initially investigated. Dipping potatoes in a higher concentration of osmotic solution was found to enhance post-dripping water loss, but the dipping time had no significant effect. Post dipping dehydration was also conducted as a multi-stage operation by repeatedly dipping potato slices in the osmotic solution followed by ambient exposure for a time period. The resulting water loss was comparable to osmotic dehydration but the uptake of the osmotic solute was significantly lower (less than 50%). In the next part of the research, multi-stage dip dehydration was investigated as a pre-treatment prior to frying potato chips, in order to evaluate its effect on the product quality. Multistage dip dehydration was found to decrease the frying time considerably which also resulted in about 17% lesser oil in the product. Colour measurements showed that the pre-treated samples were brighter and suffered lesser browning than blanched samples. The final part of this thesis is dedicated to gaining insights into shallow frying of potato and chicken cubes – an extensively employed but less understood dehydration operation in relation to deep-fat frying. The experimental investigations involved determining transient temperature variations during the process, moisture loss, oil uptake and the development of product texture. A key outcome of this research was the observation that the significant amount of water released initially from the food tended to form an oil-in-water emulsion, which subsequently boiled off to result in a phase inversion (i.e. the formation of water-in-oil emulsion). The temperature clearly increased after the phase inversion when the crust and texture of the end-product were formed.