About this Research Topic
Food wastes/byproducts are an important issue in the world currently. It is estimated that over 1.2 billion tons of food are lost or wasted in the world, equal to about one third of edible food intended for human consumption. The staggering amount of food waste has huge impacts on food insecurity, economic loss, and climate change. On the other hand, food wastes/byproducts present a major source of carbohydrates, proteins, oil, and other phytochemicals, which are of great potential to be recovered and/or converted to high value functional ingredients such as antioxidants, dietary fibers, oligosaccharides, protein, and peptides. The increasing demand for environment protection, together with the desire for human health improvement, are encouraging advanced bio-processing/biorefinery design for functional ingredient discovery and production from food and agricultural wastes/byproducts.
This Research Topic welcomes researchers to submit their recent innovative biorefinery/bio-processing development for food waste and byproduct valorization, in order to produce functional ingredients and other value-added products for improving human health and sustainable development of the agricultural and food system. Researchers working on cascading processing design to recover multiple value-added products from food byproducts, bio-process optimization (e.g., cost and energy reduction, improvement of functional ingredient yield and purity, etc.), advanced technologies applied for processing effect monitoring, and economic, environmental, and social evaluation of the designed processes, are encouraged to contribute. Ultimately, this Research Topic aims to provide the most up-to-date findings on innovative biorefinery/bio-processing design and green technique development for agricultural and food byproduct processing, modification, and characterization with the overall goal of human health improvement.
The research topic welcomes Mini/Regular/Systematic Reviews, Original Research Articles, Methods, and Technology. The themes include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Bioprocessing, biorefinery design, and novel green technologies development for the processing of agricultural and food byproducts and waste;
• Functional ingredient generation (e.g., antioxidants, phenolic compounds, dietary fibers, oligosaccharides, protein, peptides, amino acids etc.);
• Advanced techniques (e.g., XRD, XPS, Raman, SEM, TEM, FTIR, HPLC-MS, and GC-MS, etc.) applied to functional ingredient characterization and process evaluation;
• Improving health benefits and nutritional properties (e.g., bioavailability, digestibility, bioaccessibility, etc.) from agricultural and food byproducts;
• Functional ingredients with the co-production of other value-added chemicals, materials, biofuels, and energy;
• Techno-economic analysis, life cycle assessment, and social assessment for various novel biorefinery/bio-processing and technology design for sustainable development of agricultural and food systems.
This Research Topic welcomes researchers to submit their recent innovative biorefinery/bio-processing development for food waste and byproduct valorization, in order to produce functional ingredients and other value-added products for improving human health and sustainable development of the agricultural and food system. Researchers working on cascading processing design to recover multiple value-added products from food byproducts, bio-process optimization (e.g., cost and energy reduction, improvement of functional ingredient yield and purity, etc.), advanced technologies applied for processing effect monitoring, and economic, environmental, and social evaluation of the designed processes, are encouraged to contribute. Ultimately, this Research Topic aims to provide the most up-to-date findings on innovative biorefinery/bio-processing design and green technique development for agricultural and food byproduct processing, modification, and characterization with the overall goal of human health improvement.
The research topic welcomes Mini/Regular/Systematic Reviews, Original Research Articles, Methods, and Technology. The themes include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Bioprocessing, biorefinery design, and novel green technologies development for the processing of agricultural and food byproducts and waste;
• Functional ingredient generation (e.g., antioxidants, phenolic compounds, dietary fibers, oligosaccharides, protein, peptides, amino acids etc.);
• Advanced techniques (e.g., XRD, XPS, Raman, SEM, TEM, FTIR, HPLC-MS, and GC-MS, etc.) applied to functional ingredient characterization and process evaluation;
• Improving health benefits and nutritional properties (e.g., bioavailability, digestibility, bioaccessibility, etc.) from agricultural and food byproducts;
• Functional ingredients with the co-production of other value-added chemicals, materials, biofuels, and energy;
• Techno-economic analysis, life cycle assessment, and social assessment for various novel biorefinery/bio-processing and technology design for sustainable development of agricultural and food systems.
Keywords: biorefinery, bio-processing, green technologies, functional ingredient, value-added products, human health improvement, nutritional value, techno-economic analysis, life cycle analysis, circular economy, sustainability, food wastes, food byproducts
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
