Background: Foods that promote health benefits are being increasingly used. Innovative techniques, such as nanotechnology, have been used to improve functional properties, sensory characteristics, or the conservation of foods. Objective: The objective of this study was to identify the technological domain of patents for tomato products with or without nanotechnology and elucidate the technological advances associated with the recent use of tomatoes as a natural food dye in the food industry by exploring patent documents. Methods and Results: The search was conducted using the Espacenet and INPI databases. There was an increase in patent document applications employing nanotechnology in 2013, with a peak between 2017 and 2018. China is the lead country in the number of patent applications. In Brazil, the patent applications are variable, and the food industry is most involved in studies on tomatoes as a natural food dye. Most patent deposits using nanotechnology were from companies, and the main sources of the patent application were the food and pharmaceutical industries. Conclusion: There is an increasing trend for the use of tomatoes as natural food dyes, produced with or without nanotechnology, and number of patents filed yearly. New technologies are being developed in several application areas.

This study aimed to identify the development of new food products related to family farming from scientific and technological perspectives. Data were collected from the scientific literature and patent documents in the Scopus and National Institute of Industrial Property databases, using a combination of terms, such as “family farm* OR small-hold farm* OR agricultur* farm* labor OR farm* size OR peasant farm* OR agriculture* food* product* AND food* product*”. The asterisk (*) denotes a truncation character used in articles and patent databases to perform a search using multiple terms with the same root but different suffixes. A total of 716 articles and 532 patents were identified. The data from the scientific articles provide an overview of family farming participation in the development of food products and how products that are developed by family farmers resonate with society. The patent documents found showed the development of innovative production technologies, such as machines and production methods to improve the quality of the products sold by family farmers. Therefore, there is great potential for family farming foods to advance in this technological area, with the prospect of increasing publications and new patent applications related to this subject.