The Development and Applications of Food Knowledge Graphs in the Food Science and Industry.

The deployment of various networks (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile networks), databases (e.g., nutrition tables and food compositional databases) and social media (e.g., Instagram and Twitter) generates huge amounts of multi-type food data, which plays critical roles in the food science and industry. However, these multi-source food data appear as information silos due to the well-known data harmonization problem, leading to the difficulty in fully exploiting these food data. The food knowledge graph provides a unified and standardized conceptual terminology and their relationships in a structured form, and thus can transform food information silos to a more reusable globally digitally connected Internet of Food to benefit various applications. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review on food knowledge graphs in the food science and industry. We first provide a brief introduction of knowledge graphs, and then review the evolution of food knowledge organization mainly from food classification, food ontology to food knowledge graphs. Representative applications of food knowledge graphs will be summarized with respect to new recipe development, food traceability, food data visualization, personalized dietary recommendation, food search and question-answering, visual food object recognition, and food machinery intelligent manufacturing. We also discuss future directions in this field, such as food knowledge graphs for food supply chain systems and human health, which deserve further study. Their great potentials will attract more research efforts to apply food knowledge graphs into the field of food science and industry.