Abstract:

The global demographic expansion has determined a voracious demand for edible goods, thus also originating the primary issues about the disposal of waste and by-products with high environmental impact. Waste, by-products and effluents coming from industrial processing and agricultural procedures of vegetables and fruit can be defined as biomass, according to CE directive 2001/77. Those raw materials are currently used as compost, animal feed and biofuel production. In addition, these products can be used as starting substrates for the production of high value-added compounds according to the biorefinery concept. In this review, the biorefinery strategy was applied on waste coming from the industrial processing of lemon and tomato, two of the most abundant vegetables in Italy.