Sustainable processing of agri-food by-products into food ingredients: an integrated review from pre-treatment to formulation

Abstract

Agri-food processing by-products are increasingly recognized as compositionally rich feedstocks for value-added food ingredients, yet their practical valorization remains constrained by feedstock heterogeneity, moisture sensitivity, variable processability, and the difficulty of translating laboratory-scale gains into scalable ingredient pathways. Building on emerging integrative perspectives in agri-food by-product valorization, this review reorganizes evidence from pre-treatment and green extraction through downstream recovery, fractionation, and concentration to formulation, developing a comparative synthesis intended to support first-pass route selection. Rather than treating these stages as isolated technical steps, the literature is interpreted in terms of cross-stage compatibility, intermediate-stream properties, downstream burden, and the route logic shaping ingredient production. From this comparative framing, six recurring route classes are identified: whole-stream ingredient routes, clarified hydrophilic extract powder routes, polysaccharide and fiber fractionation routes, bioactive encapsulated powder routes, lipophilic extract dispersion or emulsion-filled powder routes, and purified ingredient routes. No route class is universally superior. In screening terms, lower-burden whole-stream and clarified hydrophilic extract powder routes are generally more defensible when broad ingredient functionality, handling stability, and moderate specification control are sufficient, whereas fractionation, encapsulation, dispersion, and purification routes become more defensible only when functional specificity, protection, dispersibility, or purity clearly offset their added downstream burden. Industrial relevance and sustainability are therefore better assessed at the pathway level than inferred from extraction-stage performance alone. Overall, the synthesis suggests that industrially relevant and sustainable route selection depends less on maximizing extraction-stage performance than on matching route class with ingredient-format goals, downstream requirements, and scale-up constraints.

Graphical Abstract

1 Introduction

Food loss and waste remain major sustainability challenges across agri-food systems, not only because they generate avoidable environmental burdens, but also because food processing produces substantial side streams whose valorization potential remains underused (UNEP, 2024; Remijnse et al., 2025). These valorization challenges are also linked to environmental and economic trade-offs that need to be considered when selecting practical recovery pathways (Roy, 2023). Industrial residues such as peels, pomace, seeds, press cakes, and related fractions are increasingly recognized as compositionally rich feedstocks containing polyphenols, carotenoids, dietary fiber, and, in some cases, proteins relevant to value-added ingredient production (Carvalho et al., 2025; Khalid et al., 2025). Recent literature indicates that the agri-food sector generates more than 190 million metric tons of by-products annually, with fruit- and vegetable-derived residues accounting for a substantial share of total discards (Rațu et al., 2023). Accordingly, these streams are being viewed not merely as waste-reduction targets, but as promising inputs for ingredient-oriented valorization pathways (Oliveira et al., 2025).

Despite this potential, agri-food processing by-products are heterogeneous, often moisture-rich, and frequently variable in composition, which constrains stabilization, storage, handling, and subsequent valorization (Thomas et al., 2025). Their practical use is also shaped by regulatory requirements and by the need to define fit-for-purpose specifications and safety criteria for the intended ingredient application (Danciu et al., 2026; Wibisono et al., 2025). Extraction strategies should therefore not be treated as universally transferable solutions, but as pathway-specific choices that must be matched with feedstock condition, target fraction, downstream processing burden, and final ingredient requirements (Fernandes et al., 2025; Reig-Valor et al., 2025). In practice, effective valorization depends less on extraction efficiency alone than on process routes that integrate pre-treatment, extraction, downstream recovery, stabilization, and final ingredient application.

Within such pathways, pre-treatment and extraction are followed by downstream recovery, fractionation, and concentration before formulation; these stages are better viewed as connected route-selection stages rather than as isolated technical steps. Upstream choices shape intermediate-stream properties, downstream separability, concentration and drying requirements, solvent or water management, and compatibility with the intended food application. From this perspective, sustainability and industrial relevance are more appropriately assessed at the pathway level, because technologies that appear attractive at the extraction stage may become less persuasive once downstream purification, stabilization, formulation, and product-performance requirements are considered together (Díaz-de-Cerio and Trigueros, 2025; Ma et al., 2025).

Recent reviews have increasingly moved beyond single-technology discussions toward broader end-to-end, cascade, circular, and application-oriented perspectives on agri-food by-product valorization (Newson et al., 2025; Arvelli et al., 2025; Agnihotri et al., 2025). Nevertheless, much of the literature remains organized around perspective-specific syntheses—such as green extraction, bioactive recovery, encapsulation, or biorefinery cascades—rather than around explicit comparison of complete ingredient-production routes. As a result, it remains insufficiently clear how pre-treatment and extraction choices affect downstream separability, concentration behavior, formulation-readiness, and the feasibility of specific ingredient formats. The field also lacks a compact comparative framing that reorganizes evidence into recurring route classes evaluated by practical cross-stage criteria such as downstream burden, specification-control needs, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility.

Building on these integrative perspectives, this review reorganizes evidence across pre-treatment, green extraction, downstream recovery and concentration, and formulation into a comparative synthesis intended to support first-pass route selection for agri-food by-product valorization. The contribution lies not in claiming cross-stage integration per se, but in translating existing evidence into recurring route classes that can be compared according to ingredient-format-oriented criteria. This framing clarifies how cross-stage compatibility can guide pathway-level decision support for converting agri-food processing by-products into industry-relevant food ingredient formats.

2 Review scope, working definitions, and analytical approach

2.1 Scope and boundary of the review

This review focuses on agri-food processing by-products generated at industrial or semi-industrial scale, including peels, pomace, seeds, press cakes, spent solids remaining after extraction, pressing, or infusion processes, trimmings, and off-specification fractions that do not meet commercial quality specifications. Rather than cataloging all possible waste-management options, it concentrates on valorization pathways that can convert these streams into food ingredient formats suitable for storage, transport, handling, and downstream incorporation into food products and formulations. The emphasis is therefore placed on ingredient-oriented processing pathways rather than on disposal, energy recovery, or broad waste-management hierarchies. Particular attention is given to route classes that can be compared in terms of processing burden, specification needs, formulation demands, and practical feasibility for ingredient production.

2.2 Working definitions

For clarity, four working terms are used throughout this review. First, agri-food processing by-products refer to residual fractions generated during primary transformation or ingredient manufacture that remain compositionally rich and technically recoverable. Second, an end-to-end valorization route is defined here as a linked process sequence connecting pre-treatment or stabilization, extraction, downstream recovery, fractionation, and concentration before final ingredient formation. Third, food ingredient formats denote product forms such as dried powders, encapsulated systems, concentrates, granules, or stabilized dispersions that are practically handleable, storable, transportable, and compatible with intended end-use matrices. Fourth, route classes refer to recurring pathway types that share a comparable overall processing logic and can therefore be interpreted comparatively in terms of downstream burden, specification needs, formulation complexity, and scale-up feasibility. In this review, these route classes are operationalized through recurring comparative criteria—downstream burden, specification-control potential, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility—so that they function not only as descriptive pathway types but also as practical units for first-pass route selection. These concepts are summarized in Figure 1, which positions route-framing inputs—feedstock state, target functionality and fraction class, and intended ingredient format and specification needs—upstream of the four linked evidence stages and the downstream comparative criteria. In this structure, route classes function as comparative pathway units rather than fixed processing recipes, and first-pass route selection is based on pathway-level fit rather than isolated stage-specific performance. This distinction is important because many studies report compound recovery or bioactivity, whereas relatively few evaluate whether recovered fractions can be translated into robust ingredient formats with reproducible handling, stability, performance, and practical manufacturing relevance.

Figure 1

2.3 Literature organization and analytical approach

To provide a decision-oriented synthesis, this review adopts a narrative analytical approach rather than a systematic review and organizes the literature around four linked stages that repeatedly shape route feasibility, proceeding from pre-treatment or stabilization to extraction, then to downstream recovery, fractionation, and concentration before moving to formulation. Evidence across these stages was interpreted in terms of recurring end-to-end route classes that reflect how upstream conditioning, extraction logic, downstream handling, and ingredient-format requirements align across the full pathway. Rather than proposing a mathematical or predictive decision model, the analytical contribution of this review lies in reorganizing the literature into recurring route classes and decision criteria that support comparative, ingredient-format-oriented interpretation.

To make this narrative approach more transparent, literature identification was conducted through targeted searches of Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Google Scholar. Searches focused primarily on literature published between 2023 and 2026, with selected earlier foundational or method-defining studies from 2014 onward retained when they provided established methods, comparative benchmarks, or decision-relevant indicators. Additional backward citation tracking of relevant review and primary articles was performed, and the literature set was last updated in April 2026. Representative search combinations covered agri-food processing by-products, pomace, peels, press cakes, pre-treatment or stabilization, green extraction, ultrasound-, microwave-, enzyme-assisted, pressurized-water, supercritical-fluid, and DES/NADES-based extraction, membrane filtration, adsorption, concentration, spray drying, encapsulation, emulsion systems, ingredient formats, scale-up, and industrial translation.

Studies were selected and prioritized according to their relevance to route selection, cross-stage process linkage, intermediate-stream behavior, downstream processability, formulation-readiness, and practical implications for food ingredient production. Articles were prioritized when they reported decision-relevant information beyond recovery yield, including feedstock state, process burden, separability, concentration behavior, drying-readiness, formulation performance, stability outcomes, or industrial feasibility. Studies focused only on disposal, energy recovery, non-food applications, or isolated compound screening without relevance to ingredient-route selection were not emphasized. Where available, primary experimental and process-oriented studies were weighted more heavily than review articles in comparative interpretation, whereas review papers were used mainly to position broader developments, terminology, and the state of the art.

All literature selection, prioritization, comparative interpretation, route-class assignments, and structured qualitative descriptors presented in this review were performed by the authors. Comparative interpretation across route classes was anchored in four recurring criteria: downstream burden, specification-control potential, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility. Downstream burden was interpreted with reference to the likely need for clarification, purification, solvent or water removal, washing, drying, or multistage polishing. Specification-control potential was interpreted in relation to compositional consistency, impurity tolerance, target-fraction definition, and product-specification fit. Formulation complexity was interpreted in relation to carrier addition, encapsulation or interfacial design, stabilization requirements, and redispersion control. Scale-up defensibility was considered in terms of process simplicity, unit-operation familiarity, control sensitivity, and cumulative downstream handling burden.

Route-class assignment was based on the dominant intended ingredient format and the unit-operation sequence required to reach that format. When a pathway could plausibly be associated with more than one route class, assignment was made according to the stage imposing the greatest downstream or formulation burden. For example, a phenolic-rich hydrophilic extract converted directly into a dry powder was interpreted as a clarified hydrophilic extract powder route, whereas the same extract requiring carrier-mediated protection during storage or application was interpreted as a bioactive encapsulated powder route. This rule was used to reduce ambiguity when overlapping processing pathways were encountered in the literature.

For the extraction-family comparison in Section 4, representative green extraction pathways were interpreted at the screening level using extraction-performance or yield tendency, solvent or water burden, downstream purification burden, and scale-up defensibility. For the integrated route matrix, each representative route class was judged against the same four cross-stage criteria defined above. The resulting descriptors should be interpreted as author-derived, criterion-anchored comparative tendencies intended for first-pass route screening, not as fixed rankings, numerical scores, pooled quantitative estimates, or predictive decision outputs. Where evidence across cited studies was mixed, the descriptor reflects the dominant practical tendency across the representative literature rather than an exceptional single study.

This conceptual linkage is summarized in Figure 1. The figure should be read from left to right: route-framing inputs define the relevant evidence base; evidence is then organized as a linked sequence from pre-treatment and stabilization to extraction, then to downstream recovery, fractionation, and concentration before moving to formulation; recurring route classes are treated as comparative pathway units; and the four recurring decision criteria are used to screen in or deprioritize feasible route classes before detailed process design.

3 Pre-treatment and stabilization strategies

Pre-treatment and stabilization strategies are discussed here as route-defining interventions that respond to feedstock heterogeneity and determine the intermediate state carried into later processing stages. Agri-food processing by-products vary widely in moisture content, compositional profile, and target-component levels, and this variability directly affects storage stability, handling requirements, extraction accessibility, separability, drying demand, and formulation compatibility (Saini et al., 2025; Zaky et al., 2024; Thomas et al., 2025). Accordingly, Table 1 compares representative pre-treatment and stabilization options according to functional pre-treatment category, representative pre-treatment approach, primary purposes and immediate effects, indicative control variables, representative feedstock characteristics, potential downstream implications, key considerations and limitations, and representative references. These columns are intended to make the practical burden profile of each option visible without implying that energy demand, equipment intensity, process time, chemical-input requirements, scalability, or later processability are separately quantified criteria.

Taken as a decision aid, Table 1 shows that lower-complexity options such as dewatering, size reduction, and conventional hot-air drying are often more attractive when operational simplicity, cost control, and throughput are prioritized. By contrast, vacuum- or freeze-drying, nonthermal cell-disruption, enzymatic treatment, microbial fermentation, and acid- or alkali-assisted conditioning may better preserve sensitive components or improve target-fraction accessibility, but typically impose higher equipment, energy, residence-time, chemical-control, or stabilization burdens. Pre-treatment choice should therefore be interpreted as an early burden-allocation decision rather than as a single-stage optimization step.

Moisture and shelf-life management is the earliest practical filter because it determines whether a by-product stream can be stabilized, stored, transported, and processed before deterioration. Mechanical dewatering or pressing is especially relevant for high-moisture pomace, pulps, and spent solids because it can reduce water load and subsequent drying demand, although soluble constituents may partition into a separate liquid stream and alter downstream route design (Thomas et al., 2025; Vukušić et al., 2021). Conventional hot-air drying remains attractive when operational simplicity, storage stability, and transportability are prioritized, but heat exposure may promote stickiness, hardening, or losses of heat-sensitive compounds (Won and Choi, 2025; Le et al., 2025; Gricenko et al., 2026). Vacuum- or freeze-drying is more defensible for higher-value, quality-sensitive residues rich in phenolics, anthocyanins, or aroma-active compounds, where improved quality retention may justify higher cost and lower throughput (Gricenko et al., 2026; Zhang Y. et al., 2025; Thomas et al., 2025). Consistent with Table 1, acidification for stabilization is treated here as a storage-oriented intervention for short-term spoilage control and pH-based stabilization before downstream processing, whereas acid- or alkali-assisted treatment is treated as matrix conditioning for cell-wall swelling or partial solubilization and target-fraction release. In both cases, changes in matrix structure, solubilization behavior, or pectin-related functionality may influence later separation and formulation behavior (Harratt et al., 2025; Gomez Mattson et al., 2026; Zhang et al., 2024; Pattarapisitporn and Noma, 2025).

Structural conditioning becomes most important when the bottleneck is feed uniformity, matrix accessibility, solids handling, or separability rather than short-term preservation alone (Arcia et al., 2024; Ferraz and Silva, 2025). Particle-size reduction and sieving can improve surface exposure and feed consistency, but excessive comminution may increase fines, aggregation, dusting, compaction, or slurry thickening, thereby complicating later handling and phase separation (Arcia et al., 2024; Phonphimai et al., 2025; Schmid et al., 2024). For dried powders or comminuted fibrous materials, low-water physical classification approaches such as air classification and, where appropriate, elutriation may be considered when particle-size- or density-based separation can help avoid unnecessary wet extraction or solvent-intensive fractionation (Schutyser et al., 2025; Skřivan et al., 2024). More intensive thermal, nonthermal, enzymatic, microbial, or acid/alkali conditioning may improve permeability or target-fraction release, but these gains should be weighed against equipment intensity, residence time, contamination or chemical-control demands, downstream stabilization, purification burden, and formulation compatibility (Goonathilaka et al., 2026; Ferraz and Silva, 2025; De Laet et al., 2025; Samad et al., 2025; Haque et al., 2025). Structural conditioning is therefore an early route-selection lever whose value depends on whether gains in extraction, separability, or functionality offset the added burden across the full pathway.

Taken together, pre-treatment should be compared not only by immediate stabilization or extractability gains, but also by how each strategy redistributes later burdens associated with drying, chemical handling, separation, formulation-readiness, and scale-up. The most appropriate pre-treatment is therefore not the option that maximizes a single short-term response, but the one that offers the most defensible balance among process burden, downstream compatibility, and ingredient-format goals.

4 Green extraction pathways

Green extraction pathways are considered here as conversion-stage route options whose practical value depends not only on extraction performance, but also on solvent or water demand, intermediate-stream quality, and downstream clarification, concentration, and formulation requirements in line with recent discussions of green solvent extraction and eco-friendly recovery techniques for plant waste valorization (Shahbaz et al., 2025; Oliveira et al., 2025). For first-pass comparison, Table 2 groups representative pathways into process-intensified liquid-phase extraction, pressurized-fluid extraction, and tailored-solvent extraction, and compares them through four screening criteria: extraction-performance tendency, solvent or water burden, downstream purification burden, and scale-up defensibility. The key decision insight is that extraction gains can shift burden toward solvent recovery, water removal, purification, or scale-up control; therefore, extraction routes should be screened by pathway-level manageability rather than nominal recovery alone. These comparisons are intended as screening-level benchmarking rather than fixed rankings across heterogeneous feedstocks, target fractions, operating conditions, or reporting bases.

Process-intensified liquid-phase extraction is used here as a practical grouping for liquid-medium-based routes that intensify mass transfer, solubilization, or matrix disruption rather than as a strictly solvent-defined extraction family. Ultrasound-assisted, microwave-assisted, enzyme-assisted or hybrid extraction, and hydrodynamic cavitation differ mechanistically, but they share a route-selection trade-off: moderate-to-high recovery can often be achieved under comparatively accessible conditions, while the resulting solvent-bearing, particle-containing, or water-rich streams may still require clarification, solvent management, and downstream concentration (Kagueyam et al., 2025; Oliveira et al., 2025; Cauduro et al., 2025). Accordingly, process-intensified liquid-phase extraction routes are best interpreted as balanced first-pass options when shorter or milder extraction is useful and the resulting liquid stream remains manageable for clarification, solvent recovery, and subsequent concentration.

Pressurized-fluid extraction represents a more condition-dependent family because pressure and temperature can improve extraction efficiency or selectivity while also shifting burden toward equipment intensity, severity control, solvent or water removal, and phase handling. Pressurized liquid extraction can enhance recovery and shorten extraction time, but still produces solvent-bearing extracts that require cooling, clarification, and solvent recovery before concentration or formulation (Višnjevec et al., 2024; Oliveira et al., 2025). A primary comparison on olive leaves illustrates this pressurized-fluid route logic: within the tested olive-leaf system, pressurized liquid extraction and ultrasound-assisted extraction were compared using pure water, 15% ethanol, and 15% glycerol at 50 and 70 °C; pressurized liquid extraction with 15% glycerol at 70 °C gave the highest total polyphenol recovery, whereas solvent type and extraction technology affected compound-class selectivity rather than supporting a universally superior extraction profile (Huamán-Castilla et al., 2024b). Pressurized hot-water or subcritical-water extraction reduces reliance on organic solvents, but often transfers burden to downstream water handling, separation, and severity-related risks such as hydrolysis, browning, or degradation (Li et al., 2025; Aminzai et al., 2025; Somat et al., 2025). Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), particularly supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO₂) extraction, is most defensible for lipophilic or aroma-active fractions because it offers low residual-solvent burden and tunable selectivity, although high capital intensity, pressure requirements, modifiers, and staged fractionation remain important constraints (Zhang and Wu, 2025; Nozari and Kander, 2025). Primary work on pre-fractionated sour cherry pomace supports this conditional interpretation: scCO₂-SFE recovered 3.38–8.69% lipids and enriched tocopherols, carotenoids, and phytosterols, but yield and composition varied with feed fraction, showing that scCO₂-SFE performance depends on prior fractionation and feed heterogeneity as well as solvent properties (Jūrienė et al., 2024). Thus, pressurized-fluid routes become defensible when stronger recovery, solvent reduction, or lipophilic selectivity justifies pressure operation, thermal severity, water or solvent removal, and higher capital or control demands.

Tailored-solvent extraction is treated as a third route family in which solvent composition or phase behavior is deliberately tuned to improve selectivity or partial enrichment. DES- and NADES-based systems are attractive because polarity, acidity, hydrogen-bonding capacity, and water content can be adjusted for selective recovery of polyphenols, pigments, flavonoids, and related functional fractions; however, their practical translation remains constrained by high viscosity, mass-transfer limitations, filtration difficulty, downstream separation, solvent recycling, component-dependent toxicological uncertainty, incomplete regulatory acceptance for food use, and residual solvent carryover that may complicate ingredient standardization and product approval (Husak et al., 2026; Şahin et al., 2026). Recent primary evidence from Citrus aurantium by-products further shows that different NADES combinations can produce different recovered polyphenol profiles, indicating that solvent composition reshapes extract composition rather than simply improving bulk recovery (Fernández-Cabal et al., 2025). For this reason, DES/NADES routes should be interpreted as composition-sensitive selective routes, not as default “green” upgrades. Their value depends on whether selectivity gains justify the additional burdens of viscosity management, separation, recycling, residual-solvent control, and regulatory defensibility.

Bio-based solvent systems, including aqueous ethanol and aqueous glycerol, offer a more straightforward translation pathway when food-compatible solvent choice, extraction efficiency, and downstream ingredient integration can be rationalized within existing processing contexts (Oliveira et al., 2025; Huamán-Castilla et al., 2024a). Aqueous two-phase extraction (ATPE), implemented through aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS), differs because it combines extraction and partial purification through phase partitioning, but its feasibility depends strongly on phase-former recovery, carryover, salting-out design, and compatibility with later concentration or formulation (Bekavac et al., 2024; Perestrelo et al., 2025). Primary ATPE work using ethyl lactate-based ATPS supports this point by showing that polyphenol retrieval depended on phase composition and salting-out design, so the apparent purification advantage of ATPE remains conditional on downstream phase-management feasibility (Perestrelo et al., 2025). For first-pass route selection, tailored-solvent options are therefore most defensible when selectivity, phase-based enrichment, or specification advantages clearly outweigh additional burdens in viscosity control, solvent or phase-former recovery, regulatory justification, and cleanup.

Overall, Table 2 indicates that extraction-family selection should be based on where each route shifts burden after extraction. Process-intensified liquid-phase extraction routes often remain balanced first-pass options within familiar liquid-phase processing; pressurized-fluid routes are more defensible when stronger selectivity, solvent reduction, or lipophilic recovery justifies pressure-, water-, or temperature-related burdens; and tailored-solvent routes are most persuasive when selectivity gains outweigh viscosity, recycling, regulatory, and cleanup challenges. The most appropriate extraction pathway should therefore be selected not by nominal recovery alone, but by the strength of feedstock-specific evidence supporting selectivity, solvent or water burden, downstream purification burden, and translational manageability for the intended ingredient pathway.

5 Recovery, fractionation, and concentration of intermediate streams

Recovery, fractionation, and concentration are treated here as the stage at which extracted streams are converted into formulation-ready intermediates. Route feasibility is often determined at this stage because clarification, selective enrichment, and volume reduction govern whether recovered fractions can be carried forward into drying, encapsulation, dispersion, or direct formulation (Saini et al., 2025; Reig-Valor et al., 2025; Danciu et al., 2026). Intermediate streams commonly contain suspended solids, colloidal or macromolecular material, non-target solubles, salts, and other matrix-derived impurities that influence clarifiability, selectivity, fouling behavior, concentration performance, and later formulation-readiness (Cabeza et al., 2025; Reig-Valor et al., 2025; Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2025). Accordingly, Table 3 compares representative downstream routes by linking their separation logic to decision-relevant indicators of clarifiability, selectivity, fouling or viscosity burden, concentration efficiency, solute retention, and intermediate-stream usability. The key decision insight is that downstream routes should be screened not by purity or concentration alone, but by whether they produce a more usable intermediate without imposing disproportionate target loss, fouling, solvent or water removal, or later formulation burden.

A first downstream decision layer concerns preliminary clarification and size-based fractionation. Mechanical solids removal is often useful for particle-rich liquid streams because it can reduce the solids burden presented to subsequent membrane, adsorption, or concentration steps, but it is defensible only when target losses to the removed solids remain limited and the clarified stream becomes genuinely more processable (Ninga et al., 2022; Biswas et al., 2016; Ghosh et al., 2017; Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2025). Membrane filtration provides a more selective extension of this layer by separating suspended solids, colloids, macromolecules, and target-enriched fractions through pore size or molecular-weight cut-off; however, its value depends on selectivity–throughput trade-offs rather than rejection alone (Reig-Valor et al., 2024; Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2025; Dushkova et al., 2025). In wine lees, sequential ultrafiltration and nanofiltration achieved total polyphenol rejection rates of 54 and 90%, respectively, while pore-blocking behavior affected process performance, showing that fouling control must be considered before the more selective membrane stage (Reig-Valor et al., 2024). Similarly, ultrafiltration of phenolic-rich rose wastewater showed that a lower molecular-weight cut-off increased rejection and concentration factor, but also reduced permeate flux and increased energy demand, making membrane selection a selectivity–throughput trade-off rather than a simple recovery-maximization problem (Dushkova et al., 2025). Thus, clarification routes are most informative when turbidity or total suspended solids (TSS) reduction, target loss, rejection or retention, flux decline, enrichment factor, and volume reduction are interpreted together.

A second decision layer concerns selective enrichment and fractionation. Resin adsorption and desorption systems are most useful when clarified liquid extracts still contain substantial dissolved non-target solubles, because they can enrich target compound classes while reducing sugars, pectins, salts, or other matrix-derived co-solutes (Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2026; Gaglianò et al., 2025; Freitas et al., 2025). Their practical value depends on whether adsorption capacity, desorption efficiency, and co-solute exclusion generate an eluate that is more suitable for later stabilization or formulation. In white wine lees, the MN202 resin achieved an adsorption ratio of up to 60.5% and a desorption ratio of 97.9%, whereas total adsorption–desorption efficiency for glucose and fructose remained very low, indicating that the value of the route lies in selective purification rather than adsorption alone (Gaglianò et al., 2025). Similarly, citrus model solutions showed polyphenol desorption generally above 80% and approaching equilibrium in about 60 min, while sugars and pectins were desorbed to a much lesser extent, emphasizing that purification performance must be interpreted against competing matrix effects (Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2026). By contrast, antisolvent precipitation is most relevant when the aim is to recover polysaccharide-rich or other less-soluble fractions, but it imposes antisolvent-use, washing, solvent-recovery, and scale-up burdens that must be justified by precipitate yield, target-fraction recovery, and downstream manageability (Chen and Wang, 2025; Xu et al., 2014; Nadar et al., 2022; Bedzo et al., 2024). Selective enrichment routes should therefore be compared by how efficiently they convert clarified extracts into manageable intermediate fractions, not by purity gain, precipitate yield, or adsorption recovery in isolation.

A third decision layer concerns volume reduction and concentrate formation. Membrane concentration routes, including nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, and forward osmosis (FO), can increase target-solute concentration while reducing thermal exposure, but their practical limits are often set by fouling, permeate-flux decline, osmotic pressure effects, and solute-retention trade-offs (Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2025; Alsobh et al., 2024; Reig-Valor et al., 2025). An integrated orange peel process illustrates this point: after ultrafiltration, FO concentrated polyphenols 2.03-fold in the FO step and 1.47-fold overall, while only insignificant amounts of phenolics, sugars, and pectins passed into the draw solution, showing that concentration performance should be judged through both enrichment and solute containment (Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2025). Vacuum evaporation provides a contrasting thermal concentration route for reducing water or solvent burden under reduced pressure, but thermal history, viscosity development, and retention of heat-sensitive markers remain central to downstream handling and formulation suitability (Rosemary et al., 2025; Sujinda et al., 2025; Bozkir and Baysal, 2017). Cryoconcentration offers a lower-thermal alternative for sensitive liquid streams, although implementation is constrained by ice-separation efficiency, process duration, and equipment complexity (Yata et al., 2025; de María Vásquez-Castillo et al., 2024; Vidal-San Martín et al., 2024). Although pomegranate juice is not itself an agri-food by-product stream, it is retained here as an analogous heat-sensitive aqueous stream example for illustrating cryoconcentration trade-offs that may also apply to by-product-derived liquid extracts. In this analogous system, filtration- and centrifugation-assisted block cryoconcentration produced a concentration index of 3.1 and a solute yield of 88% under one condition set, whereas another operating window increased solute yield to 97% but reduced the concentration index to 2.5, demonstrating a recovery–concentration trade-off rather than a single-criterion optimum (de María Vásquez-Castillo et al., 2024). Concentration routes are therefore most informative when concentration factor, solute retention, viscosity development, thermal or ice-separation burden, and subsequent usability for drying, encapsulation, or formulation are evaluated together.

Overall, Table 3 indicates that downstream routes should be selected by the usability of the intermediate stream they generate. Mechanical clarification, membrane filtration, resin adsorption, antisolvent precipitation, membrane concentration, vacuum evaporation, and cryoconcentration each become defensible only when gains in clarifiability, selectivity, enrichment, or concentration outweigh target losses, fouling or viscosity penalties, solvent or water removal, and later formulation constraints. In this sense, downstream recovery is not a routine cleanup stage, but an early route-confirmation or route-rejection point that determines whether an apparently promising extract can become a formulation-ready ingredient intermediate.

6 Formulation into industry-relevant ingredient formats

Formulation is treated here as the stage at which recovered fractions are translated into practically usable ingredient formats. The suitability of powders, encapsulated ingredients, and stabilized dispersions depends largely on the physicochemical state of the intermediate stream generated in Section 5, including particle load, solids content, viscosity, carrier compatibility, interfacial structure, drying behavior, redispersion performance, storage stability, and food-matrix compatibility (Mazár et al., 2025; Xiao et al., 2025). Table 4 links representative intermediate-stream classes to formulation formats and formulation-readiness metrics. The key decision insight is that formulation should be screened as a stream–format compatibility problem: an intermediate stream that is analytically valuable may still be impractical if it cannot be dried, protected, dispersed, reconstituted, or incorporated into the target food matrix under realistic constraints.

Powder routes are most suitable for clarified or low-particle aqueous extracts and concentrated but pumpable feeds whose viscosity, solids content, and carrier compatibility remain within a manageable drying range (Mazár et al., 2025; Jiang H. et al., 2025; Pujapanda et al., 2025). Their practical appeal lies in storage stability, logistics, and dosing convenience, but successful translation depends on whether the feed can be dried without excessive wall deposition, stickiness, poor powder recovery, or impaired reconstitution. For the route classification used in this review, carrier-based dry extracts are treated as powder-route examples when carriers are used mainly as drying aids to improve powder recovery, handling, or reconstitution; by contrast, carrier-assisted systems are treated as encapsulated powder routes when carrier or wall-material selection is central to protection, retention, masking, controlled release, or delivery of labile bioactives. Fiber-rich or particle-bearing suspensions can also be directed toward whole-material powders or granules when coarse particle presence is acceptable, but such routes remain constrained by texture, sedimentation, mouthfeel, and matrix-specific sensory limits (Magalhães et al., 2025; Ungureanu-Iuga et al., 2025; Mammolenti et al., 2025). Application-specific structural requirements are particularly important in plant-based meat analogue systems, where insoluble dietary fiber from by-products may contribute to structure but must still satisfy matrix compatibility and sensory constraints (Rasul et al., 2025).

Encapsulated formats are most relevant when intermediate streams contain protection-sensitive bioactive-rich fractions whose direct use is limited by oxidation, volatility, bitterness, low dispersibility, or poor storage stability (Emon et al., 2025; Rahim et al., 2025; Szpicer et al., 2025). In these routes, formulation feasibility depends on the match between core-material properties and carrier architecture, including food-grade wall-material selection, loading capacity, encapsulation efficiency, release behavior, and retention during processing or storage (Huang et al., 2025). Under this classification, spray-dried calamansi waste prepared with a maltodextrin/gum Arabic carrier system is treated here as a carrier-assisted encapsulated powder example, because the study evaluated core-to-carrier ratio, phenolic encapsulation efficiency, and bioactive retention during storage (Lee et al., 2025). From an industrial perspective, encapsulation is defensible only when the added costs of wall materials, homogenization, and drying are justified by measurable gains in shelf life, handling, masking, controlled release, or ingredient functionality, and when the selected carrier system and residual processing aids remain acceptable within food-regulatory and labeling constraints in the intended market. Primary grape-pomace studies support this criterion-based interpretation. Spray-dried grape pomace extracts coated with alginate–gelatin achieved encapsulation efficiencies of 95.90–98.01% and improved intestinal bioaccessibility relative to other coating systems, showing that wall-material choice can materially affect release performance (Martinović et al., 2025). In a real food matrix, microencapsulated grape pomace extract added to commercial Greek-style yogurt showed 97.82% encapsulation efficiency, an average particle size of 3.48 μm, and improved storage stability and intestinal-phase bioaccessibility, demonstrating that encapsulation value depends on whether protection during storage remains meaningful after incorporation into the target food product (López-Astorga et al., 2025).

Stabilized dispersion routes are most relevant for oil-rich, solvent-exchanged, or otherwise lipophilic fractions that require interfacial design to improve aqueous dispersibility, oxidative protection, or incorporation into beverages, emulsified foods, and reconstitutable lipid-based systems (Xiao et al., 2025; Rahim et al., 2025; Mangope et al., 2025). Their practical value depends on droplet-size control, emulsifier selection, oxidative stability, redispersion behavior, and resistance to coalescence, creaming, phase separation, or drying-induced structural change. As with encapsulation, these routes become industrially defensible only when emulsifier choice, high-energy structuring, shelf-life protection, and food-label or regulatory constraints are outweighed by product-level performance gains. Roberts et al. (2026) is used here as formulation-level evidence for lipophilic dry delivery rather than as evidence for a complete end-to-end agri-food by-product valorization route. In that study, oat oil described as a grain-refining by-product was stabilized in a fully bio-based emulsion system containing cellulose nanocrystals, methylcellulose, and tannic acid. Subsequent spray drying produced powders with yields of up to 82%, oil contents of 89%, moisture contents below 2%, and rapid reconstitution into stable emulsions. These results support the interpretation that interfacial design, rather than oil recovery alone, is central to translating a lipophilic fraction into a practical dry delivery format. Thus, dispersion or emulsion-filled powder routes should be screened in only when interfacial structure solves a real formulation problem, such as oxidative protection, aqueous incorporation, surfactant-free stabilization, or rapid redispersion after drying.

Collectively, Table 4 reinforces that formulation success depends on matching intermediate-stream properties with the operational and performance constraints of the final ingredient format. Powder routes are favored when drying, storage, and reconstitution remain manageable; encapsulation routes are justified when carrier-mediated protection or release provides measurable functional advantage; and stabilized dispersion routes are justified when interfacial design enables aqueous incorporation or redispersion that simpler powder routes cannot achieve. Formulation should therefore be interpreted not as a final packaging step, but as a route-confirmation stage in which otherwise promising intermediates are tested against stability, handling, sensory performance, regulatory acceptability, cost, and food-matrix fit.

7 Integrated route overview and decision-support matrix

Building on the stage-wise synthesis in Sects. 3–6 and the conceptual framework summarized in Figure 1 and Table 5 reorganizes the literature into six recurring end-to-end route classes and compares them through four cross-stage criteria: downstream burden, specification-control potential, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility. In this way, Table 5 translates the conceptual linkage in Figure 1 into a screening-level route-selection aid for ingredient-oriented valorization. The matrix should be interpreted as a set of criterion-anchored qualitative descriptors and comparative tendencies for first-pass route differentiation, not as a prescriptive hierarchy, numerical procedure, or predictive decision model. Operationally, Figure 1 and Table 5 play complementary roles: Figure 1 defines the decision sequence, whereas Table 5 applies the same criteria to representative route classes as a screening-level comparison. This pairing is intended to make the route matrix an analytical decision aid rather than a compilation of pathway descriptions.

In practical use, Table 5 should be read sequentially. First, the intended ingredient format and required degree of specification control should be defined. Second, the acceptable level of downstream burden and formulation complexity should be assessed in relation to the target application, cost tolerance, processing infrastructure, and industrial constraints. Third, route classes should be screened in when their main limiting burden is manageable for the intended ingredient objective, and screened out when the expected downstream or formulation burden exceeds the specification, functionality, or performance advantage required. The matrix is therefore useful because it identifies the best-fit feasible route class at an early stage, before detailed process design or scale-up resources are committed.

For a high-moisture, heterogeneous pomace intended as a stable fiber-rich powder, the whole-stream ingredient route would normally be screened in first because low downstream burden, solids retention, and direct powder production are aligned with the ingredient objective. A clarified hydrophilic extract powder route would remain plausible only if clarification, concentration, and drying can be achieved without disproportionate burden relative to the intended fiber-forward application. A polysaccharide and fiber fractionation route would become more defensible only when the value proposition requires a more defined soluble-fiber or hydrocolloid fraction whose functional advantage justifies additional separation, washing, and drying.

By contrast, for an oxidation-sensitive phenolic-rich fraction intended for beverage or yogurt-type applications, the whole-stream route would usually be screened out early because particle burden, matrix retention, and weaker specification control are poorly aligned with the target format. A clarified hydrophilic extract powder route may be sufficient when a stable dry ingredient with manageable reconstitution is acceptable. A bioactive encapsulated powder route becomes more defensible when protection during storage, masking, dosing control, or delivery performance is central to the ingredient objective. These contrasting cases show that the framework narrows feasible route classes by matching pathway-level burden, specification-control requirements, and formulation demands to the intended ingredient format.

At one end of the matrix, the whole-stream ingredient route is most defensible when heterogeneous, particle-rich by-products are intended to function as fiber-rich, matrix-contributing, or minimally refined ingredients rather than purified or tightly standardized fractions. Primary studies illustrate both the strength and the limit of this route: Williams pear canning residues were converted into fiber- and polyphenol-rich powders through relatively simple acid immersion, drying, milling, and sieving, whereas whole grape pomace improved the polyphenol profile of extruded puffs but altered expansion, porosity, and texture (Gomez Mattson et al., 2026; Ungureanu-Iuga et al., 2025). This route should be used when low processing burden and solids retention matter more than tight compositional control; its main limits are feedstock variability, sensory burden, particle-related constraints, and weaker specification control.

The clarified hydrophilic extract powder route occupies a middle position between whole-stream and highly selective routes. It is most suitable when a low-particle hydrophilic intermediate can be clarified, concentrated, and dried into a stable extract powder, soluble powder, or premix ingredient with manageable reconstitution burden (Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2025; Mazár et al., 2025). This route is distinguished from bioactive encapsulated powder routes by the dominant formulation objective: carrier use remains compatible with this route when it mainly improves drying, handling, or reconstitution, whereas carrier-mediated protection, retention, masking, or controlled release shifts the route assignment toward encapsulated powder production. This route should be used when a cleaner dry hydrophilic ingredient is needed but formulation complexity must remain relatively low; its main limits are clarification burden, stickiness, drying sensitivity, and reconstitution penalties.

The polysaccharide and fiber fractionation route becomes more defensible when the intended value depends on fraction-specific functionality rather than bulk solids retention. This route can provide stronger specification control for pectin, soluble dietary fiber, or hydrocolloid-type ingredients, particularly when physicochemical and rheological functionality must be benchmarked against established hydrocolloid or fiber ingredients (Swackhamer et al., 2025; Vale-Hagan et al., 2025). However, it typically imposes higher burden through selective extraction, fractionation, washing, purification, and drying. Graded ethanol precipitation studies show that recovered polysaccharide fractions can differ in structure and bioactivity across precipitation conditions, supporting this route when controlled fractionation delivers functional advantages that justify the added separation burden (Chen and Wang, 2025; Zhu et al., 2024). This route should be used when hydrocolloid or soluble-fiber functionality must be defined more precisely; its main limits are fractionation burden, solvent or washing demand, drying burden, and scale-up sensitivity.

The bioactive encapsulated powder route is most appropriate when recovered fractions are sensitive to oxidation, light, heat, storage deterioration, bitterness, or poor direct-use stability. Compared with clarified dry-extract routes, this pathway introduces greater formulation complexity through carrier selection, encapsulation conditions, drying behavior, and retention during storage, but these burdens become defensible when protection, masking, dosing control, controlled release, or shelf-life improvement is central to ingredient performance (Szpicer et al., 2025; Martinović et al., 2025; López-Astorga et al., 2025). Spray-dried calamansi waste is assigned here to the bioactive encapsulated powder route rather than to the clarified hydrophilic extract powder route, because its route-defining outcomes included core-to-carrier ratio, phenolic encapsulation efficiency, and retention of bioactive compounds during storage (Lee et al., 2025). Primary grape-pomace studies support this logic by showing that carrier choice and food-matrix incorporation can materially affect encapsulation efficiency, bioaccessibility, storage stability, and performance after application in yogurt-type systems (Martinović et al., 2025; López-Astorga et al., 2025). This route should be used when carrier-mediated protection provides a measurable application benefit; its main limits are carrier cost, drying complexity, labeling or regulatory constraints, and formulation overengineering.

The lipophilic extract dispersion or emulsion-filled powder route is most relevant when water-incompatible fractions, such as carotenoids, fixed oils, essential oils, or other lipophilic actives, require interfacial design for aqueous incorporation, oxidative protection, or redispersion after drying (Roberts et al., 2026; Xiao et al., 2025; Mangope et al., 2025). Its central burden is not extraction alone, but the need to build and preserve a robust colloidal or interfacial structure across storage, drying, and reconstitution. Roberts et al. (2026) provides formulation-level support for this route rather than evidence for a complete end-to-end agri-food by-product valorization route. The study used oat oil described as a grain-refining by-product and optimized spray drying of bio-based emulsions stabilized by cellulose nanocrystals, methylcellulose, and tannic acid into dry, reconstitutable powders. In this example, powder yield, oil loading, low moisture, and rapid reconstitution depended on emulsion design rather than oil recovery alone. This route should be used when interfacial structure solves a real formulation problem that simpler powder routes cannot address; its main limits are colloidal instability, oxidation risk, emulsifier dependence, redispersion burden, and food-label or regulatory constraints.

At the opposite end of the matrix, the purified ingredient route is most defensible when tighter compositional consistency, removal of non-target solutes, lower impurity tolerance, or product-specification compliance is central to the intended end use. This route offers the strongest specification-control potential, but also carries high downstream burden because it often requires targeted extraction, membrane enrichment, adsorption, selective polishing, concentration, and standardization (Arslan Kulcan et al., 2025; Gaglianò et al., 2025; Alonso-Vázquez et al., 2026). Primary studies on pomegranate peel and white wine lees illustrate that ultrafiltration–adsorption and resin-based polishing can improve target selectivity and purity, but the route is justified only when the value of tighter specification control outweighs polishing burden, yield penalty, and cost (Arslan Kulcan et al., 2025; Gaglianò et al., 2025). This route should be used when purity or specification compliance is the central objective; its main limits are cumulative polishing burden, yield loss, cost, and lower scale-up defensibility.

Overall, Table 5 reinforces that route selection should be treated as a cross-stage compatibility problem rather than as a search for the highest-yielding or most technologically sophisticated option. The most defensible route is the one that best balances downstream burden, specification-control potential, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility against the functional and compositional requirements of the intended ingredient format. This route-class framing provides the basis for the following discussion by clarifying where the main burden–control trade-offs arise before detailed process design, techno-economic evaluation, or scale-up commitment.

8 Discussion

This review frames agri-food by-product valorization as an end-to-end route-selection problem rather than a sequence of independent technical optimizations. Across the literature, a recurring limitation is that stage-specific performance indicators, such as extraction yield, target-compound concentration, purity, or bioactivity, do not necessarily predict whether a recovered stream can be translated into an industry-relevant ingredient format. Once intermediate-stream properties, solvent or water management, clarification burden, concentration behavior, drying-readiness, formulation requirements, and product-specification fit are considered together, apparently strong single-stage results may become less persuasive. The central value of the framework developed here is therefore not that it identifies a universally superior route, but that it makes cross-stage incompatibilities visible before route commitment.

The route-class framing also clarifies why different valorization pathways fail for different reasons. Whole-stream ingredient routes often fail through feedstock variability, particle burden, sensory constraints, and weaker specification control, even when their processing burden is low. Clarified hydrophilic extract powder routes are more vulnerable to clarification, stickiness, drying, storage, and reconstitution penalties. Polysaccharide and fiber fractionation routes can provide stronger functional definition, but may be limited by separation, washing, solvent use, drying burden, and scale-up sensitivity. Bioactive encapsulated powder routes become defensible only when carrier-mediated protection, masking, release, or shelf-life gains outweigh carrier cost, drying complexity, labeling constraints, and regulatory acceptability. Lipophilic extract dispersion or emulsion-filled powder routes are limited mainly by colloidal stability, oxidation risk, emulsifier dependence, and redispersion behavior. Purified ingredient routes offer stronger specification-control potential, but may fail when polishing burden, yield loss, cost, or scale-up sensitivity exceeds the value of tighter compositional control.

This distinction is important because much of the current evidence base still rewards high-yield or high-bioactivity proof-of-concept studies more readily than decision-oriented cross-stage reporting. Many studies report recovery efficiency, target composition, or antioxidant activity, but less consistently report intermediate-stream behavior, fouling risk, solvent or water removal burden, concentration limits, drying-readiness, reconstitution performance, food-matrix performance, or product-specification compliance (Wibisono et al., 2025; Reig-Valor et al., 2025; Mazár et al., 2025). As a result, routes that appear promising at one stage remain difficult to compare in terms of pathway-level feasibility. The present framework addresses this limitation by shifting comparison from isolated performance endpoints toward recurring cross-stage criteria: downstream burden, specification-control potential, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility. These criteria are not intended to replace detailed techno-economic, regulatory, or process-design evaluation, but they can support earlier and more transparent route rejection when a pathway’s cumulative burden is already mismatched to the intended ingredient objective.

The same pathway-level perspective is also necessary for interpreting sustainability claims. Routes described as “green” on the basis of extraction solvent, extraction severity, or target recovery may become less convincing if they require extensive solvent recovery, water removal, downstream purification, concentration, drying, encapsulation, or polishing before a usable ingredient is obtained (Díaz-de-Cerio and Trigueros, 2025; Danciu et al., 2026; Mladenović et al., 2025). Conversely, lower-burden physical differentiation options may be more appropriate when the intended ingredient is a dried powder, comminuted fibrous material, or other solid-phase ingredient. In such cases, low-water physical approaches—particularly air classification and, where appropriate, elutriation—should be screened before committing to water- or solvent-intensive extraction when particle-class differentiation, solid ingredient functionality, or broad material retention can meet the ingredient objective (Schutyser et al., 2025; Skřivan et al., 2024). At industrial scale, this reinforces a central route-selection principle: a nominally green extraction step is not necessarily the most sustainable option when a simpler physical route can deliver the required ingredient function with lower downstream burden.

For practical use, the framework is best interpreted as a testable screening logic rather than a fixed route-selection model. Because the underlying literature is heterogeneous in feedstock composition, processing conditions, target fractions, and reporting bases, the descriptors used here should not be interpreted as validated numerical scores. Their value lies in making route-level trade-offs explicit, comparable, and testable across alternative pathways from the same feedstock and target ingredient context. Framework-derived screening expectations can be evaluated by applying the same criteria to alternative routes starting from the same feedstock and target ingredient class, and then comparing the framework-identified limiting burdens with experimentally observed bottlenecks. For example, a given pomace or press-cake stream could be processed through a whole-stream powder route, a clarified hydrophilic extract powder route, and a more selective fractionation or encapsulation route, while reporting feedstock state, intermediate-stream properties, fouling or clarification behavior, concentration factor, drying yield, storage stability, reconstitution behavior, food-matrix performance, and product-specification fit. Under such a design, the framework would be supported if route classes expected to have high downstream or formulation burden also show bottlenecks such as severe fouling, high solvent-removal load, poor drying yield, unstable powders, weak redispersion, sensory penalties, or difficulty meeting specification targets.

Future progress in agri-food by-product valorization will therefore depend on a stronger minimum cross-stage reporting set. Beyond recovery yield or bioactivity, studies should report feedstock characteristics, pre-treatment state, intermediate-stream solids and viscosity, clarification or fouling behavior, enrichment or concentration factor, solvent or water removal burden, drying-readiness, formulation outcome, storage or reconstitution performance, and product-specification fit. Comparative studies that evaluate several route classes from the same feedstock under shared target-ingredient constraints would be particularly valuable, because they would allow downstream burden, specification-control potential, formulation complexity, and scale-up defensibility to be assessed under comparable conditions. Such reporting would make the proposed framework more testable, improve cross-study comparability, and strengthen pathway-level sustainability assessment for industry-relevant ingredient production.

9 Conclusion

Agri-food by-product valorization should be approached as an integrated route-selection problem in which the starting point is the intended ingredient format and the required degree of specification control. Extraction-stage yield, purity, or bioactivity alone is insufficient for judging practical feasibility. Instead, route choice should be guided by how feedstock condition, downstream burden, formulation complexity, specification-control needs, and scale-up defensibility align with the functional and compositional requirements of the target ingredient. This review therefore reframes sustainable ingredient production as a pathway-level burden–control problem rather than as a sequence of independent technical optimizations.

For first-pass industrial screening, whole-stream ingredient routes should often be considered first when heterogeneous solids can be retained, moderate specification variability is acceptable, and the intended value lies in fiber-rich functionality, matrix contribution, or broad material use. Clarified hydrophilic extract powder routes become more appropriate when a cleaner soluble or reconstitutable dry ingredient is needed and clarification, concentration, drying, and reconstitution burdens remain manageable. More selective or formulation-intensive routes—polysaccharide and fiber fractionation, bioactive encapsulated powders, lipophilic extract dispersions or emulsion-filled powders, and purified ingredient routes—should be selected only when their added separation, carrier, interfacial, drying, polishing, cost, or regulatory burdens are justified by a clearly defined need for fraction-specific functionality, protection, stability, dispersibility, purity, or product-specification compliance.

Future work should move beyond single-stage recovery metrics by testing alternative route classes from the same feedstock and target ingredient context under shared criteria. A minimum cross-stage reporting set should include feedstock state, intermediate-stream properties, downstream burden, formulation outcomes, and product-specification fit. More consistent reporting of these variables would improve route comparability, strengthen pathway-level sustainability assessment, and support the development of industry-relevant ingredient systems from agri-food by-products.

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