Shivali Banerjee

Abstract: Background Fruit and vegetable processing industries account for the largest segment of food waste which is produced worldwide. The disposal of this waste requires a huge capital investment, majority of which is the transportation costs. This results in dumping and burning of these wastes in open fields. Scope and approach In this review, we have focussed on the valorisation schemes to extract valuable biomolecules from pineapple on-farm and processing waste for food and therapeutics applications. Biorefinery approach has been highlighted for sustainable production of value added products. Key findings and conclusion The high content of carbohydrate (55%) in pineapple waste makes it an appropriate substrate for the production of valuable chemicals such as xylitol, xylooligosaccharides, lactic acid, succinic acid and others, which have potential application in the food industry. The enzyme, bromelain, which is present in pineapple, has potential for application in therapeutics as well as in the food industry. Such utilisation of waste could prove to be a better alternative in the mitigation of environmental problems and also to propose a novel method to produce valuable chemicals. Despite the opportunities, there are challenges in the valorisation of this waste, largely due to the poor understanding of its nutritional and economic value, gap in close-linked markets, logistics issues for plant scale-up. Since most of the research is limited to lab-scale studies, additional research is required to evaluate techno-economic feasibility of the processes involved in the bio-refinery with minimum environmental impact for effective transition to circular economy.

TL;DR: In this paper, an alkali-based method was used to extract hemicellulose from pineapple peels at different alkali concentrations at temperatures ranging from 35°C to a maximum of 65°C for a fixed period of 16h.

TL;DR: The present extraction method avoids costs related to purification and expensive immobilization carriers and shows significant reusability characteristics with an activity retention of >85% after 5-time cycles, which could lead to potential industrial applications in both food and non-food sector.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors extracted bromelain from pineapple byproducts via an aqueous, low-temperature process and further fractionated into hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin.