Agro-Food Waste: Harnessing the Potential Significance of Natural Biofilm Inhibitors

Abstract

A biofilm is a natural form of a surface-attached community of bacterial cells bound to each other by an extracellular matrix. The challenge of biofilm-linked infections is the noteworthy resistance of bacterial cells to both host immune responses and available antibiotics. Moreover, the misuse of antibiotics led to the emergence and widespread occurrence of antimicrobial resistance among different pathogens, consequently, increasing the chronicity of biofilm-associated infections and threatening human lives. Natural products like plant-derived antibiofilm agents could offer more therapeutic efficiency with fewer adverse effects than conventional antimicrobials. Agro-food wastes are an abundant resource of antimicrobial phytoconstituents that can modulate different biofilm formation and development mechanisms. The accumulation of food biowaste in huge amounts results in adverse economic and environmental consequences. Therefore, valorization and recycling of this bio-waste have captured the attention and sparked the research interest of scientists all over the world. The main aim of the present review is to shed light on recent studies that delve into the antibiofilm potential of agro-food by-products as a sustainable resource of innovative and promising candidates. The latest articles from various databases such as the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, Elsevier databases, and Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases were screened over the period from 2017 to 2023. The major keywords for searching were biofilm inhibition, agro-food waste, natural origins, environmental sustainability, quorum-sensing mechanisms, and industrial by-products. In conclusion, agro-food waste is considered a sustainable resource of several precious bioactive compounds that could offer new promising antibiofilm candidates.