Excessive low-cost residues were generated in huge amounts along the whole agro-industrial chain, from agricultural product harvest to further processing. Few residues have been processed and redirected into the industrial chain, while most of the residues were discarded, leading to a huge amount of resource wastes and serious environmental problems. It is well known that the discarded low-cost residues contain a considerable amount of proteins, lipids and available carbohydrates, thus valorization of these residues by biological approaches, including fermentation and enzymatic catalysis, has drawn great attention. Utilizing these residues for producing high value-added products has recently been recommended to replace costly food materials and assumed to have growing economic importance.
Up to now, there is still a scarcity of established economically feasible processes based on biological approaches. Unlike chemical processes, biological processing for agro-industrial residues required specialized pretreatment corresponding with the subsequent bioprocess, while the present universal pretreatment methods were not feasible. Developing optimal pretreatment methods of various residues, or integrating pretreatment with the subsequent bioprocess is of great importance to improve the production efficiency of value-added products. From another aspect, establishing strategies of recovering bioactive molecules from residues is critical for implementing a sustainable bio-based economy, and these functional ingredients such as unsaturated fatty acid, antioxidants, antimicrobial compounds, biological insecticides, enzymes or oligosaccharides are currently under study.
The present Research Topic aims to collect the recent advances of value-added products from agro-industrial residues by biological approaches. The designated residues can be derived from the whole industry chains of crops, vegetables, fruits, forest products, and aquatic products. The topic reflects the multidisciplinary character of the field, including biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and biotechnology. We encourage the submission of Original Research articles, Brief Research Reports, Perspectives and Reviews. Themes covered in this Research Topic include but are not limited to:
• New characterized enzymes or microorganism for converting agro-industrial residues to value-added products
• Biological pretreatment of residues
• Bioprocess design, strain screening and metabolic engineering for improving the yield of value-added products
• Converting residues into newly-developing molecules with agricultural activity, such as biological insecticides, biological herbicides and biostimulants
• Design and application of new bioprocess for agro-industrial residues undeveloped
• Novel biorefinery approaches
• Applications of solid state fermentation to produce value-added products
Excessive low-cost residues were generated in huge amounts along the whole agro-industrial chain, from agricultural product harvest to further processing. Few residues have been processed and redirected into the industrial chain, while most of the residues were discarded, leading to a huge amount of resource wastes and serious environmental problems. It is well known that the discarded low-cost residues contain a considerable amount of proteins, lipids and available carbohydrates, thus valorization of these residues by biological approaches, including fermentation and enzymatic catalysis, has drawn great attention. Utilizing these residues for producing high value-added products has recently been recommended to replace costly food materials and assumed to have growing economic importance.
Up to now, there is still a scarcity of established economically feasible processes based on biological approaches. Unlike chemical processes, biological processing for agro-industrial residues required specialized pretreatment corresponding with the subsequent bioprocess, while the present universal pretreatment methods were not feasible. Developing optimal pretreatment methods of various residues, or integrating pretreatment with the subsequent bioprocess is of great importance to improve the production efficiency of value-added products. From another aspect, establishing strategies of recovering bioactive molecules from residues is critical for implementing a sustainable bio-based economy, and these functional ingredients such as unsaturated fatty acid, antioxidants, antimicrobial compounds, biological insecticides, enzymes or oligosaccharides are currently under study.
The present Research Topic aims to collect the recent advances of value-added products from agro-industrial residues by biological approaches. The designated residues can be derived from the whole industry chains of crops, vegetables, fruits, forest products, and aquatic products. The topic reflects the multidisciplinary character of the field, including biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and biotechnology. We encourage the submission of Original Research articles, Brief Research Reports, Perspectives and Reviews. Themes covered in this Research Topic include but are not limited to:
• New characterized enzymes or microorganism for converting agro-industrial residues to value-added products
• Biological pretreatment of residues
• Bioprocess design, strain screening and metabolic engineering for improving the yield of value-added products
• Converting residues into newly-developing molecules with agricultural activity, such as biological insecticides, biological herbicides and biostimulants
• Design and application of new bioprocess for agro-industrial residues undeveloped
• Novel biorefinery approaches
• Applications of solid state fermentation to produce value-added products
