The industrial use of ionizing radiations, such as gamma and electron beam (e-beam) radiation, is regulated and authorized by international organizations (EU, EFSA, IAEA, FAO, WHO) for several purposes: medical devices sterilization, materials modification, heritage preservation and food decontamination. However, there is mistrust among the general public regarding food irradiation due to the wrong association with an induced radioactivity on the product. Therefore, several obstacles have to be overcome in order to promote food irradiation as a safe and useful application of ionizing radiations. The increasing demand for safe and healthy food is another issue that could help to promote the use of these technologies. In Europe, the preservation of food by irradiation is strongly regulated but is still not very popular, in spite of several food safety issues, such as pathogens contamination or insects’ infestation that could be easily solved by an environment friendly technology, without the use of chemical fumigants. We will present briefly the recent state-of-art of food irradiation research in Portugal, selecting the main results of three collaborative projects funded by national and international agencies, regarding the effects of gamma radiation on physical and chemical parameters of selected materials: fruits, vegetables and mushrooms, toward the objective to keep the focus on this valuable tool for food processing.To the Projects/Agencies that supported this research: Portuguese Government and E.U. funds: PRODER/FEADER/EU (AROMAP Project); Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support to CIMO (PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2014), and C2TN (RECI/AAG-TEC/0400/2012 and UID/Multi/04349/2013 projects); International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Coordinated Research Project CRP-D6-RC-1163.2 and IAEA Research contract 19220.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
