Abstract
This introductory article opens the section giving an overview of the state-of-the-art AI technologies in the food and beverage industry and the current AI development in areas such as quality optimisation and analytics and predictive maintenance. It also presents future potential and opportunities for AI in the sector, covering trends of using AI and IIoT technologies in production optimisation, safety/quality, maintenance, waste reduction, environmental sustainability, and packaging. Finally, the article introduces the five contributions to this section, providing highlights on the use of AI and IIoT in various scenarios in champagne production and soybean manufacturing processes and challenges and technologicaladvancements.