Agro-Industrial Food Waste as a Low-Cost Substrate for Sustainable Production of Industrial Enzymes: A Critical Review

Abstract

The grave environmental, social, and economic concerns over the unprecedented exploitation of non-renewable energy resources have drawn the attention of policy makers and research organizations towards the sustainable use of agro-industrial food and crop wastes. Enzymes are versatile biocatalysts with immense potential to transform the food industry and lignocellulosic biorefineries. Microbial enzymes offer cleaner and greener solutions to produce fine chemicals and compounds. The production of industrially important enzymes from abundantly present agro-industrial food waste offers economic solutions for the commercial production of value-added chemicals. The recent developments in biocatalytic systems are designed to either increase the catalytic capability of the commercial enzymes or create new enzymes with distinctive properties. The limitations of low catalytic efficiency and enzyme denaturation in ambient conditions can be mitigated by employing diverse and inexpensive immobilization carriers, such as agro-food based materials, biopolymers, and nanomaterials. Moreover, revolutionary protein engineering tools help in designing and constructing tailored enzymes with improved substrate specificity, catalytic activity, stability, and reaction product inhibition. This review discusses the recent developments in the production of essential industrial enzymes from agro-industrial food trash and the application of low-cost immobilization and enzyme engineering approaches for sustainable development.