Sustainable solutions for agro processing waste management: An overview

Abstract

Technological revolution in the field of agriculture has tremendously increased the agriculture production. The net impact by the revolution in agriculture has resulted in fast development on food processing industries all over the world. As a result of this rapid development, significant quantities of agricultural products are subjected to processing to make them suitable for consumption, increased storage stability, improved nutrition and sensory quality. Food industrialization has generated large quantity of food products, provided employment to large number of people and uplifted the economic status, at the same time; it generated waste in huge quantities causing environmental pollution. Pollution has not only scientific aspects but also sociological and economical, causing adverse impacts on human beings and its environment. The food wastes can be classified into different categories, such as crop waste and residues; fruits and vegetables by-products; sugar, starch and confectionary industry by-products; oil industry by-products; grain and legumes by-products; distilleries and breweries by-products. Food industry wastes and by- products are geographically scattered comprising large volume and low nutritional value. Consequently, collection, transportation and processing cost of the by-products can exceed the selling price. If we could produce valuable products from food industry by-products through new scientific and technological methods, these byproducts could be converted into products with a higher economic value than the main products. Different ways of utilization of by-products from food processing industry can be mainly classified into five categories, such as source for food/feed ingredients, as a carbon source for growing useful microorganisms, as fertilizer by composting, as a source for direct energy generation/biogas production and as a source for high value-added products. This chapter provides a brief discussion on the utilization of agro-processing wastes as a source of nutrients, phytochemicals, and fermentable substrate.