The demand for water, energy, and food resources increased in tandem with the world's population, industrialization, and urbanization. Anthropogenic sources of environmental pollutants degrade the water resources while population expansion contributes to rising demand for non-renewable energy resources which further enhances the greenhouse gas emissions. Also, maintaining the food security/-safety is another challenge which needs to be addressed for securing ‘planetary public health’. The sustainability programs, pragmatic studies, and strategies from regulatory/scientific institutions attempt to reduce the depletion of these resources and mitigate environmental challenges however, the individualistic approaches proves to be inadequate. Therefore, the present review emphasizes the use of Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus as a tool to combat environmental degradation, address climate action, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this article, we investigate methodological paradigm and application of WEF Nexus in an inter-related framework through case studies on water resources, energy efficiency, urban food production, food waste reduction, cross-sectoral perspectives, and the circular economy. It has been widely observed that excessive exploitation of these resources influences the global food supply and demand, water availability, resilience in energy and socio-economic sector. Also, such perturbations in water, energy, and food sectors were found to be inextricably linked with climate change. The results further revealed that WEF nexus approach stimulates multilevel and inter-sectoral governance, thereby aiding to address the complexities and inefficiencies in achieving the SDGs. The prioritization of WEF Nexus strategy, especially under the event of COVID-19 can be a holistic approach to sustainably utilise natural resources to help achieve the environmental sustainability.

This reviewed summarized the research status of water content detection methods of plant-based food materials, analyzed the water content detection devices, advantages, disadvantages and applications, and discussed the application of water content detection in different types of plant-based food materials. The advantages of hot air drying, microwave method, Karl Fischer method, absolute dry nitrogen purge method, spectral technology and imaging technology were highlighted, and the future development direction of water content detection of plant-based food materials was prospected.

Although there seems enough water available for our global food needs, there are large areas with growing water scarcity. Food security in these water scarce areas cannot be met through self-sufficiency. The only option is to become more dependent on food imports which is increasingly risky due to volatility in production and food prices. Before 2008, declining food prices and increasing global cereal production favoured the food import strategy. The 2008 world food crisis represented a shock to this strategy and renewed attention was paid to the self-sufficiency strategy. The aim of this paper is to compare the food security strategies of Egypt and Jordan, two water-stressed, increasingly populated, oil-poor countries, pre and post 2008, by means of a food-water analytical framework using FAOSTAT data. Findings show that Egypt and Jordan have many similarities in their food security situation as both are highly dependent on food imports (Egypt 50%, Jordan 95%), and both have a reduced capacity to absorb future price increases. As food imports are inevitable under the water scarce context of Egypt and Jordan, it is important to focus on how to cope with volatilities. Our analysis shows that Jordan has better absorbed the costs of rising food imports than Egypt and that Egypt is trapped by its high domestic cereal production. Having revealed the limited options available to water-scarce countries for food security, we discuss the potential of grain reserves to cope with future price hikes and production shocks.

The critical interlinkages among the food, land, and water (FLW) systems are complex and context-specific. There has been limited research on how policies governing one resource have deep implications for the other linked resources. Further, the process of developing policies is highly complex, and each evolves differently. In addition, policy changes are implemented in response to socio-cultural, economic, environmental, and political changes. Thus, individual policies may develop conflicting priorities and effects. To ensure the effectiveness of national policies and strategies, it is crucial to gather context-specific evidence on the coherence between policies governing FLW systems and address points of incoherence. Policy coherence is important to identify and strengthen synergies across economic, social, and environmental policy areas and address any trade-offs1 between them to align domestic policy objectives with internationally agreed objectives. The study offers key evidence-based recommendations to address the identified gaps and challenges in the selected national policies, which are essential for enhancing policy coherence.

Globally Food, Land, and Water Systems (FLWS) are being degraded rapidly. Indian agriculture is heavily dependent on natural resources. Agriculture plays a significant role in India’s $3.5 trillion economy, employing 43% of the available labor force. The share of agriculture and allied sectors in total gross value added (GVA) of the economy is 18.8% during 2021-22. The agriculture sector consumes a large portion of available natural resources, utilizing 90% of freshwater resources. Overexploitation of natural resources is leading to depleted water resources, deteriorating soil health and land degradation. Land degradation alone is estimated to have an economic cost of 2.54% of GDP and 15.92% of GVA from agriculture and forestry. It is critical to manage the available resources for achieving livelihood, water, food, and nutritional security of the country. The CGIAR initiative on Agroecology aims to develop and scale agroecological practices and innovations with small-scale farmers and other agricultural and food system actors by establishing Agroecological Living Landscapes (ALLs).

Demographic, economic, social, and climate change are all putting pressure increasing on natural resources through global energy, food, and water demand growth, which threatens the well-being of the ecosystems. To address this scientific and political challenge, a dual-purpose optimization tool has been proposed with the approach of minimizing the environmental effects and development costs of the region in line with resource consumption management, which optimally takes resources from the ecosystem, and regarding development approach (ecotourism development in this study), it has suggested the optimal strategy to improve the economic benefits. Moreover, this model is able to propose some effective management policies on resource planning at the regional level. This approach has been applied to Shif Island in the south of Iran. The main results are: (i) The regional potential has the possibility of increasing more than 2067 tourism numbers per year, which can compensate for a large part of the regional development costs. (ii) The regional management strategy of wastewater and solid waste resources with the view of the nexus approach development of the system (development of the eco-industrial park) and the ecosystem (the relationship between the soil and plant model) and the system development models in line with the regional demand), can reduce waste production to about zero and provide more than 90% of the region's fertilizer needs in order to improve the ecosystem's performance. (iii) In this model, the producers of materials and energy are the main inputs of the ecosystem, and the outputs of the ecosystem include the outputs of the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing process in the remote areas, as well as mineral resources (industrial raw materials and fossil resources), renewable energy, etc. Consumers consist of humans and living organisms of the urban-rural ecosystem.In general, in this paper, the aim is to develop a practical method for analyzing the symbiosis of living and non-living parts of the ecosystem in terms of water- Food-Energy and Ecosystem nexus model. In this regard, a hybrid technology model has been suggested to minimize the dynamic cost of changes in line to reach an optimal path for the development of living and non-living interaction.

This article applies the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus to explore the relationships between Iraq's water (demand and supply), energy (oil, gas and electricity), and food production, moving beyond sector-specific studies. Thus, this is a WEF analysis of a country that is emerging from years of conflict and instability and is among the first WEF applications to Iraq at the national (as opposed to regional or metropolitan) level. We utilize various open-source data, peer reviewed and grey literature to survey environmental conditions, setting the ground for the study of WEF interrelationships. We note the decline in the quality and availability of water, focusing on it as a key input into both agricultural and oil production. We argue that the declining quality and availability of water over many decades is unable to sustain both present agricultural practices and rising oil output, highlighting the difficulty of increasing the outputs of these sectors. As such, the article underlines the need for a multi-sectoral approach in dealing with the present challenges of water, energy and food production and argues that a radical restructuring of the relations between the sectors is required. We offer policy recommendations that seek to overcome internal barriers, constraints that exist and are potentially solvable within Iraq, and other measures geared towards external barriers, including the actions of neighbors.

The study aims to compare three methods used for the evaluation of water absorption of wheat flour: a) a direct method consisting of a standard procedure on a Farinograph-E device and b) two indirect methods, namely NIR spectroscopy and centrifugation. Forty-four samples of Czech food wheat were collected from the harvest year 2021. Namely, 23 samples of food wheat from the standard maturity collection ‘SM2’ and 21 samples from the early maturity collection ‘EM2’. All wheat samples were ground to obtain wheat flour of fine granulation. The flour samples were characterised by protein and ash content of 10.55-14.75% and of 0,59-0.63%, respectively. The water absorption ranged from 55.7% to 63.2% flour weight (Farinograph standard procedure), 60.1-67.1% flour weight (NIR spectroscopy), and 67.6-77.2% flour weight (centrifugation). Based on the results obtained by ANOVA statistical analysis, no significant difference was found for all qualitative parameters of SM2 and EM2 (p = 95%). According to the mentioned methods for both indirect determinations of water absorption in the sets SM2 and EM2, the prediction of the standard farinograph water absorption was more accurate using the NIR technique (minimal and maximal pair differences of 1.01 and 6.86 percentage points, in contrast to 1.78 and 14.87 percentage points for the centrifugation method). Linear regression confirmed the primary importance of protein content for the water absorption values. Also, the ash content should be considered because it reflects the dietary fibre level, and the fibre influences the water absorption values as well.

This document provides a method module for the assessment of the true price of an agricultural or horticultural product, within the public-private partnership ‘Echte en Eerlijke Prijs’. It contains the key methodological aspects to measure and value three impacts of agri-food products and value chains: air, soil and water pollution.