Special issue on 'Byproducts from agri-food industry: approaches for their reduction and strategies for their revalorization' - Edited by Jara Perez-Jimenez and Manuel Viuda-Martos

摘要

Agri-food industry generates, during the stages of raw material collection and preparation of derived food products, thousands of tons of byproducts, constituted by skins, peels, seeds, leaves, other inedible fractions, or parts discarded due to sensorial characteristics. These byproducts usually generate environmental problems due to the high amounts of them that are yearly generated and their high water activity that promotes microbial development. Most strategies for the use of byproducts have focused either in low value-added activities, such as animal feed, or the expensive extraction of some minor compounds; an alternative to these approaches would be the use of the whole byproducts for high value-added activities such as the development of functional foods. Also, most of the research carried out during last years in this topic is focused each time in a specific byproduct, avoiding an overview of the current state of the art, which is nevertheless necessary to know exactly where we are and to transfer the advances in the research of some byproduct to other ones.