Editorial Note

The 1st Scientific-Technological Congress IAL2020: Advances and Challenges in Food Engineering was successfully held from November 18 to 20, 2020, in a virtual format through UNIVALLE's Microsoft Teams platform and was also broadcast live via the university's Facebook page. During the event, renowned panelists from Denmark, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and various regions of Bolivia presented their research and findings. As part of the congress, a call for academic article submissions was issued, resulting in the contribution of eight research papers, which, along with six extended abstracts from the keynote conferences, are included in this special issue of the Bolivian Journal of Sciences. The articles featured in this edition cover a wide range of topics, including food legislation, contaminants in food, technologies for by-product recovery, trends in the development of new products, and modern food analysis techniques. Additionally, research on the valorization and use of native chili peppers and stevia is included. I am confident that the manuscripts presented in this special issue of JBC will serve as a valuable contribution for researchers, faculty, students, and the broader community involved in science, technology, and food engineering.