Dear Friends and Colleagues,

A Message from the Congress Chair,

Hello,

As the Association of Food Technology-Turkey, we finalized the 3rd International Congress on Food Technology (ICFT2018) with a great success. I then express my gratitude to the members of the Organizing Committee for all their hard work and performance throughout these 3 days and to the members of the Scientific Committee for their great efforts in evaluating many of the abstracts before the Congress.

The success of all congresses is considered by the number of attendants to the first/early in the morning sessions of the congress’ on the last day. Our Congress is successful when viewed with the terms of this evaluation. In other words, "A congress becomes a success only if participants attend". So, I would also like to thank to all participants once again for their contributions and express my thanks to all speakers and the chairs of the sessions, who helped the Congress work.

We have had around more than 250 presentations from 227 participants from 12 different countries including Turkey at this Congress, these are: Bulgaria, Brazil, Greece, Italy, Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Spain, Thailand, the Netherlands, and the UK. Within these presentations, the current situation of food science and technology had been discussed and we made some key decisions after hearing about new technologies and methodologies for global solutions to enhance food technology and avoid food fraud. I think we would all agree that the quality of the presentations in ICFT2018 have been a high standard. In addition, we tried to do our best to accept all requests for poster and/or oral presentations of the colleagues, but of course we were also unable to accept all of them.

We are also very proud in giving financial support to 6 young scientists and/or students in registration to our Congress. They all worked as Congress Staff during the Congress. Providing them a sense of responsibility and an experience of being a part of this Congress, is admittedly one of the primary tasks of the Association of Food Technology-Turkey.

We also announced the name of the winner of poster award at the closing session of our Congress. PhD student Merve Sılanur YILMAZ (MSc.) received the poster award with poster number P144. The winner presented with hard disk and a framed certificate.

Not only enjoying the meals at the gala dinner, we also enjoyed the social tours. There were some people who tried to make pottery in traditional workshops in Uçhisar, as well as people who had experienced hot air balloon flight first time in their lives.

Cappadocia (land of the beautiful horses) is the one of the fascinating nature wonder in the world where the natural effects of wind, water and rain eroded this area into a spectacular, surrealist landscape of rock caves, capped pinnacles and fretted ravines in colors ranging from warm tones of red and gold to cool tones of green and gray. Therefore, some of the foreign participants enjoyed visiting Cappadocia after our Congress. They joined to the tours of Ürgüp, Göreme, and Avanos. We are sure that they enjoyed these tours apart from gaining ideas and experience from ICFT2018. They took photos and shared their positive experience in social networking sites. They contributed to the tourism potential of Turkey. This is also an indirect task of the Association of Food Technology-Turkey.
All my friends in my team really worked very hard and spent a lot of effort both before and during our Congress and we got exactly the spiritual response of these efforts. As a result, we have done really a great job.

All abstracts, presentation slides, photographs, video recordings (permission received ones) will be published at the Congress’ web site very recently; hence please keep following this web site: www.intfoodtechno2018.org

Here is the final declaration of the Congress 2018:

- Foods are complex structures, unlike they are supposed to. They are in environmental, biological, and chemical interactions. The interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, inter-country cooperation is extremely important in terms of correct evaluation of these interactions.
- Continuous research studies should be carried on food science and technology including food safety and quality in order to ensure the delivery of accurate information to the consumers.
- Information pollution on foods continues to occupy the agenda and create insecurity to the consumers. The press, universities, scientists and public authorities have important duties in preventing this.
- There are still difficulties faced by the countries in addressing their food safety.
- Policies need to be developed to encourage participation from public and universities to the Congresses of food science and technology in order to make these scientific congresses be more effective and efficient.
- Information, ideas, experiences and approaches were evaluated among the students. There was an enjoyable time with the bond established between the students.

I hope we showed you the Traditional Turkish Hospitality from our hearts. We hope to further strengthen the cordial relationship established amongst us during the Congresses.

Based on the huge success of each International Congress on Food Technology (ICFT2010, ICFT2014, and ICFT2018), we are strongly confident that ICFT2022 will also be a great success and meet our expectations. We look forward to seeing you again in our next Congress, ICFT2022.

With My Best Regards,

Prof. A. Kadir HALKMAN
The Association of Food Technology-Turkey, President