Written and oral papers of ICEF 9 have treated the following themes: extraction and separation methods, mass transfer: drying, rehydration and impregnation, protection of product by encapsulation, coating and packaging, consequences of reactions and transformations on product quality, contribution of food process engineering to hygiene of operations and to food safety, heat and refrigeration treatments, cooking and frying, emerging technologies: high pressure, pulsed fields, combined and various treatments, complex products: emulsions, gels, powders, solids, operations modelling, "intelligent systems": sensors, process control, optimisation, physical properties of products, global approaches. This congress has shown the development of research on food process engineering (FPE) in many countries. A strong tendency is the growing attention paid to the relations between processes, products and, to some extent, persons. Complex products, emerging technologies, heat treatments were the subjects of many papers. Research tools like mathematical modelling, especially computer fluid dynamics, sophisticated methods of product characterization have been extensively presented. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.