Biotechnology for Zero Waste – Emerging Waste Management Techniques (Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain (editor) etc.)

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Biogeneration of Valuable Nanomaterials from Food and

Other Wastes

Amrutha B. Mahanthesh, Swarrna Haldar, and Soumitra Banerjee

Centre for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Consultancy, Jyothy Institute of Technology, afﬁliated to

Visvesvaraya Technological University, Department of Food Technology, off Kanakapura Road, Bangalore,

Karnataka, 560078, India

23.1

Introduction

Annually, millions of tons of agricultural and food wastes are produced throughout

the world, which are disposed into environment directly or after the treatment.

Agricultural waste consisting of corncob, rice husk, rice straw, oil palm empty fruit

bunch, sugarcane bagasse, and wheat straw weighs approximately 2 billion tons

worldwide. These wastages have deep impact on economy, and direct disposure of

wastes without treatment leads to severe environmental pollution. During fruits

and vegetable processing, wastages are generated due to operations like, cleaning,

processing, cooking, packaging, etc. Agriculture wastes are the by-products of

agricultural activities, and agricultural wastes mainly come from crop residues like

residual stalks, straws, leaves, roots, husks, shells, etc. Animal wastes also contribute

to agricultural waste which can be used as manures. Food and agricultural wastes

are freely available almost throughout the year [1, 2].

According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there have been three

times increase in agriculture productivity because of increase in agricultural land,

technological developments, and rapid human population growth [3]. Hence,

generation of food and agriculture waste is unavoidable, but it can be minimized

by the utilization of proper agricultural practices, better postharvest management

schemes, and understanding the consumer’s requirement. With the evolution of

knowledge and technical development, humans realized that food and agro-waste

could be better utilized for the production of various products of industrial

importance, i.e. organic acids, protein-rich feeds, aroma compounds, bioactive

secondary metabolites, pigments, etc. Nanotechnology is an upcoming domain and

its advancement has empowered the users a wide variety of applications. Plenty

of research and review work has already been reported on various applications of

different nanomaterials. However, few works have been reported the utilization

Biotechnology for Zero Waste: Emerging Waste Management Techniques, First Edition.

Edited by Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain and Ravi Kumar Kadeppagari.