# Non-Thermal Technologies in Food Processing: Implications for Food Quality and Rheology
## 9 Conclusions  
The increasing global demand for food has led to significant challenges and opportunities in the food processing industry. For foods portraying complex rheologies, there have been significant challenges and opportunities to adopt novel thermal and non-thermal technologies for their processing and preservation. With these foods, non-thermal processing technologies or a combination of several technologies can be utilised to inactivate microbial agents without negatively impacting the food quality. This makes them a more desirable approach for their preservation. This review provides a comprehensive assessment of several non-thermal food processing technologies currently utilised in the industry, emphasising their mechanisms, energy sources, impact on food rheology, and effectiveness across different food matrices. These technologies, including UV radiation, a high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed light, and pulsed electric fields, have been shown to preserve the natural state of foods more effectively than conventional thermal methods, which often degrade sensory and nutritional attributes. However, while these techniques can provide notable contributions to extending the shelf life of foods and enhance their qualities, they may also have certain limitations or disadvantages such as high operational and scale-up costs and technological complexity which continue to limit large-scale industrial adoption. Thus, it is important to continue optimising and integrating these methods to reduce the associated cost and make them more efficient. This review contributes to the body of the literature as it integrates the latest advances in non-thermal food processing, highlighting significant gaps in research areas regarding scalability, cost reduction, and industrial utility. It pinpoints the need for additional studies on the long-term effects of these technologies on food rheology and structural stability. By providing a detailed comparison of various non-thermal methods and their implications for food quality and rheology, this work advances the frontier of research by guiding future innovations in food processing. Finally, since the consumer demand for fresh and minimally processed foods continues to grow, the food industry must prioritise adopting and advancing non-thermal processing technologies to offer food safety, quality, and sustainability and for the improved preservation of foods with complex rheologies and to meet the changing consumer perception of food processing.  
All authors were involved in the preparation and writing of the manuscript. Conceptualisation: H.O., Z.T.A.-S. and S.Z.A.-N.; Initial draft: A.H., T.M. and C.K.A.; Revising and review: Z.T.A.-S., T.M. and S.Z.A.-N.; References: C.K.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This work did not receive any funding.  
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.  
The authors would like to thank Mustansiriyah University (www.uomustansiriyah.edu.iq) Baghdad, Iraq, for its support in the current work. The authors also would like to acknowledge the support of the University of Birmingham--UK, and Al-Nahrain University--Iraq.  
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.