Polysaccharides are the main chemical components of several kinds of agro-wastes including food processing residues and agricultural wastes. These types of biomass are produced in huge amounts every year and therefore represent a global environmental issue. The exploitation ofagro-wastes as rich sources of valuable polysaccharides, according to the biorefinery approach, could afford both a strategy for waste minimizing and a more sustainable production of energy and chemicals. As a matter offact, indeed polysaccharides are traditionally used in a wide range ofproduction chains, for example, in food, pharmaceutical, material, or packaging industries. In this chapter, besides a briefoverview ofmore abundant agro-wastes produced in the world and oftheir annual production, some remarkable examples ofalready implemented or possible biotech- nological uses of waste polysaccharides are presented.
CITATION STYLE
Di Donato, P., Poli, A., Taurisano, V., & Nicolaus, B. (2014). Polysaccharides: Applications in Biology and Biotechnology/Polysaccharides from Bioagro-Waste New Biomolecules-Life. In Polysaccharides (pp. 1–29). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03751-6_16-1
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