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This article sheds light on the missing links concerning the study of using integrated enabling technologies toward sustainable and circular agriculture supply chains by examining the available literature and proposing future research possibilities.

The relevant literature was researched through online databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Academic Search Premier, Emerald, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, World Scientific Net and Springer-Link Journals, covering a period from 1999 to 2020. A systematic literature review based on 75 papers analyzed the integration of the concepts of enabling technologies, sustainability, circular economy and supply chain performance in agriculture supply chains.

It was identified that enabling technologies and agriculture supply chains alone have been explored further than integrated enabling technologies, sustainability, circular economy, supply chain performance and agriculture supply chains. Enabling technologies and agriculture supply chains' main findings are: enabling technologies have been studied to improve food safety, food quality and traceability in agriculture supply chains. The main results regarding integrated enabling technologies, sustainability, circular economy, supply chain performance and agriculture supply chains are: Internet of Things and information communication technology play an important role in addressing food security, traceability and food quality, which help achieve sustainable development goals.

This review study provides 13 research questions to underpin future trends regarding integrated technologies' application in agriculture supply chains for circular and sustainable growth.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges surrounding the implementation of digital technology (DT) agri-food supply chain (AFSC) and explore how these challenges relate to the various sustainability dimensions. Additionally, it aims to assess how these challenges are interconnected in relation to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The study employs a mixed-method approach utilizing the EFA-ISM-Fuzzy DEMATEL technique. To support and validate the findings, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) categorized 12 critical challenges in sustainable dimensions from 141 participants' responses. Furthermore, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trial and evaluation (DEMATEL) methods were used to obtain the interrelationship and hierarchical structure of the challenges.

The study identified 12 critical challenges while adopting DT in AFSC. These challenges were categorized into four sustainable dimensions: technological, economic, environmental and social. These challenges hinder the achievement of SDGs as well. Lack of regulatory and policy framework with security and privacy issues were the key challenges faced while adopting DT. These observations emphasize the necessity for government and policymakers to prioritize tackling the identified challenges to successfully endorse and execute DT initiatives in AFSC while also fulfilling the SDGs.

The implication underscores the need for collaboration among various stakeholders, such as governments, policymakers, businesses and researchers. By collectively addressing these challenges, DT can be leveraged optimally, fostering sustainable practices and making progress toward achieving the SDGs within the AFSC.

The study uses a combination technique of EFA and ISM-DEMATEL to identify the challenges faced in Indian AFSC while adopting DT and categorizes the interrelation between the challenges along with fulfilling the SDGs.

Food sustainability is a world-acknowledged issue that requires urgent integrated solutions at multi-levels. This study aims to explore how food firms can improve their sustainability performance through digital traceability practices, considering the mediating effect of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and the moderating effect of supply chain learning (SCL) for the food supply chain therein.

Hierarchical regression with a moderated mediation model is used to test the proposed hypotheses with a sample of 359 food firms from four provinces in China.

Digital traceability has a significant positive impact on the three pillars of sustainability performances among food firms. SOI (product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation) mediates the relationship between digital traceability and sustainability performance. SCL plays moderating roles in the linkage between digital traceability and both product and process innovation, respectively.

This paper contributes as one of the first studies to develop digital traceability practices and their sustainability-related improvements for Chinese food firms; it extends studies on supply chain traceability to a typical emerging market. This finding can support food sustainability practice in terms of where and how to invest in sustainability innovation and how to improve economic, environmental and social performance.

The agri-food industry is experiencing a revolutionary shift due to the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies to improve efficiency, transparency and sustainability. The importance of agri-food supply chains (AFSC) in promoting sustainability is expanding as the globe struggles with issues including resource scarcity, climate change and population growth. In order to better understand how Industry 4.0 might improve sustainability in a world that is changing quickly, this work aims to focus on identifying various sustainability assessment factors influencing AFSC to increase overall sustainability, minimize resource consumption, cut waste and streamline operations.

Important sustainability assessment factors are identified from the past academic literature and are then validated using the fuzzy-Delphi method. A method called decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is used to examine and analyze structural models with complex causal linkages. The results are then validated using sensitivity analysis.

The factors that emerged as the highest ranked for evaluating the sustainability of Industry 4.0 in AFSC are market competitiveness, and knowledge and skill development, followed by resource efficiency. Industry 4.0 technologies are essential for increasing the marketability of agricultural products because of the major implications of market competitiveness. The significance of knowledge and skill development draws attention to Industry 4.0’s contribution to the promotion of chances for farmers and agricultural employees to increase their capability.

By outlining the nexus between Industry 4.0 technologies and sustainability, the study presents a comprehensive framework that would be relevant for researchers, policymakers and industry stakeholders who want to leverage Industry 4.0 technology to build more sustainable AFSC in the future. The study findings can help the farmers or producers make sensible choices that adhere to sustainability standards and guarantee long-term financial viability.

The originality of this work lies in the identification of sustainability assessment factors especially for AFSC in the era of digitalization which has not been discussed previously.

This study aims to discover the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the agricultural cold supply chain (ACSC) and analyze their consequences on the performance of ACSC within the bounds of Indian topography.

The KPIs have been explored based on the literature review both in global and Indian context and domain expert's opinions. The interdependency characteristics and cause–effect relationship among the KPIs have been analyzed using a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (f-DEMATEL) approach.

The findings extracted from the empirical assessment of the problem find strong compliance with the notions of theoretical model assessment. The results highlight that the cost of product waste and operating and performance costs are the two most important performance indicators of an Indian ACSC. Furthermore, governmental policies and regulations and the effectiveness of cold chain (CC) equipment also have a high degree of influencing characteristics on ACSC performance.

To connect the study with practicalities, the assessment of the KPIs is allied with real-time practices by clustering the beliefs of Indian professionals. Therefore, the decision-making behavior of the experts might be influenced by geographical constraints. However, the key findings provide advantages to the ACSC players, a bright hope for future food security and a significant profit for farmers.

The presented paper encompasses various aspects of the ACSC, including theoretical and empirical perspectives exercised to contemplate the system dynamics, which inculcates the essence of the associated practicalities. Thus, this study has various practical contributions relevant to managerial and societal perspectives.

Open innovation has attracted the attention of experts and business entities for the sustainable survivability of firms, especially in the post-COVID-19 era. The food and beverage industry has been facing sustainable survivability problems. It is important to identify and evaluate the factors of open innovation from the perspectives of the food and beverage industry. This study serves that purpose by identifying and evaluating the factors of open innovation in the post-COVID-19 era with a special reference to Pakistan's economy.

The present study integrates the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM), Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) and Matrice d’ Impacts Croises Multiplication Applique a Classement (MICMAC) methods to analyze the factors involved in the adoption of open innovation in the food and beverage industry in Pakistan. Firstly, based on an extensive literature review of the most relevant studies, the factors affecting open innovation have been identified and finalized using FDM and experts' opinions. Secondly, the hierarchical framework has also been prepared by implementing the ISM approach. Thirdly, the MICMAC approach was employed to evaluate the factors to examine the driving and dependence powers of the factors of open innovation adoption.

The study identified 17 factors of open innovation adoption in Pakistan's food and beverage industry and 16 factors were finalized using FDM. The ISM-MICMAC matrix unveiled that awareness seminars and training, along with a lack of executive commitments, were strong factors with high driving power, but these factors proved to be weakly dependent powers regarding the other factors. Moreover, a lack of innovation strategy, R&D and non-supportive organizational culture exhibited low driving power but strong dependent power.

The findings of the study could help firms and business entities understand the driving and dependent factors involved in open innovation for the sustainable survivability of the food and beverage industry. The study provides strong reasons to believe that an open innovation strategy, along with stakeholder collaboration, the adoption of rules and regulations and managerial commitment, could stimulate open innovation. Moreover, governments should promote the business sector, especially the food and beverage industry, to facilitate the sector while also providing awareness seminars and training, creating environments conducive to reducing innovation costs.

Some previous studies have analyzed the factors involved in green innovation from the perspective of the manufacturing industry and environmental protection. The present study is a pioneer study to examine the factors involved in the adoption of open innovation in the food and beverage industry in Pakistan from the perspective of the post-COVID-19 era. For this purpose, the present study uses an integrated Fuzzy Delphi-ISM-MICMAC approach for the analysis.

The purpose of this article is to develop relationships between many major issues relevant to the agriculture supply chain.

With the purpose of gaining an all-encompassing understanding of the agriculture supply chain, this work uses 233 filtered research articles and three bibliometric analysis tools, namely VOSviewer, term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) and Person correlation. The collected research publications were also catalogued using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA).

Using analytic techniques, a total of 12 keywords were obtained. The study found that agri-products are in dire need of digitisation via Internet of things (IoT) and blockchain due to the usage of economic variables and comprehensive management of total food waste throughout transportation, anchoring quality and the predominant variable.

The study was limited to the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) indexing in order to assess the viability of the linked idea and problem.

This study aims to generate vital knowledge in the field of horticulture-focused agriculture supply chain based on previous justification and relationship formation.

Food SMEs is the backbone of local and world economy. Even while food SMEs are aware of the potential advantages of implementing supply chain analytics (SCA), only a small number of companies use data-based decision-making. This is because of technophobia. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that have an impact on SCA adoption which in turn influence the sustainable performance of firms.

The data were collected from 221 managers working in food-related SMEs in China by using a questionnaire-based survey. The framework of this study was validated using a rigorous statistical procedure using the technique, namely, partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings of this study suggest that all modified UTAUT components (i.e. performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and technophobia) significantly influence SCA adoption. Moreover, the existing study highlights and confirms the significance of adopting SCA to improve sustainable performance.

This research is novel, as it extends and investigates the theoretical framework based on UTAUT theory in SCA context and its impact on sustainable organizational performance. In addition, the factor of technophobia is tested in SCA context. This study has several contributory managerial implications for food SMEs.

The global research evidences indicate that the technology adoption in case of agribusiness has a potential to enhance the performance and bring operational efficiency. India is the world’s largest producer as well as consumer of milk but struggles with yield per cattle, overall productivity, low rate of technology acceptance and adoption, health detection of milching units, animal data recording and presence of dairy products in the global market. The purpose of this study is to focus on identifying the challenges of technology adoption in dairy farms and constructing a hierarchical model using soft systems methodology.

This study uses nominal group technique-based discussion with domain experts and personal interviews with dairy farm owners/managers for the identification of challenges, fuzzy interpretative structural modeling as well as FMICMAC to develop a hierarchical model of challenging elements and to divide the identified elements into four categories based on the dominance of driving-dependence power.

This research has developed a list of 12 challenges affecting the technology adoption in a dairy farm business unit, identified through the personal interviews with 60 dairy farms across three highest milk-producing states of India in terms of annual milk output – Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Lack of government support followed by lack of educational opportunities in dairy-based education were found as the most crucial and high driving challenges, whereas high cost, huge investment and low acceptance of decision-maker were found as the most dependent challenges of technology adoption.

This research is one step ahead of interpretive structural modeling that considers the fuzzy-based dominance in the model to showcase the degree of relationship along with its existence, but it lacks to statistically validate the findings using techniques like SEM.

This paper has developed a list of challenges in adoption of technology along with their inter-relationships to highlight the required focus challenge that drives or is dependent on the other challenges. The goal is to bring performance improvement and assist Indian dairy farm business stakeholders or decision-makers in formulating strategic and action plans and help policy planners to make favorable policies based on the understanding of contextual relationship between challenges.

In Indian context, dairy is an important part of agriculture sector, and milk is an essential item that facilitates income generation to small and rural households and a source item for several other businesses and activities. The results of this research suggested the policy planners and government to ensure subsidized and insured technologies, training support and facilities, educational opportunities and efforts for promotion of technology adoption among dairy farmers. The suggestions are purely on the basis of the relevance of challenges in the hierarchy and can play a significant role in improving the level of technology adoption and can ultimately uplift the social and economic well-being from micro-level of farmers to macro-stage concerning economic development of India.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is purely original and outcome of the research conducted by authors.

While the literature has highlighted the impacts of COVID-19, there is limited evidence on the gendered determinants of the impact of COVID-19 among small-scale rural traders in developing and emerging economies.

Cross-border fish traders who had operated before and during the COVID-19 pandemic were interviewed in a survey conducted in Zambia and Malawi. Logistic regressions among male and female traders were employed to assess the gendered predictors.

Heterogeneous effects in geographical location, skills, and knowledge were reported among male cross-border traders. Effects of household structure and composition significantly influenced the impact of COVID-19 among female traders. Surprisingly, membership in trade associations was associated with the high impact of COVID-19.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the migratory nature of cross-border fish traders, the population of cross-border fish traders at the time of the study was unknown and difficult to establish, cross-border fish traders (CBFT) at the landing sites and market areas were targeted for the survey without bias.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature on understanding gendered predictors of the impacts of COVID-19 among small-scale cross-border traders.