article · Cleaner and Circular Bioeconomy
Processing agricultural crops generates substantial quantities of waste, such as melon seed shells, groundnut shells, and groundnut peels. Although these residues contain valuable compounds, their complex composition of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, along with anti-nutritional factors including oxalates, phytates, cyanogenic glycosides, and trypsin inhibitors, poses hurdles for processing. Consequently, vast amounts are buried or burned, driving environmental pollution. Growing emphasis on circular bioeconomy models and zero-waste practices has stimulated the creation of various biotechnological routes to convert these specific agricultural residues into industrial products. Assessing these conversion technologies provides pathways to transform crop by-products into useful resources rather than pollutants, directly supporting global sustainability targets across industry, climate mitigation, health, clean water, and responsible resource consumption.
Agricultural residues such as groundnut and melon shells are typically treated as environmental burdens through harmful dumping or burning. Identifying biotechnological solutions to process these recalcitrant materials into useful commodities turns agro-industrial waste into valuable resources. This shift curtails pollution, protects natural ecosystems, and advances circular economic practices across agricultural processing sectors.
The findings highlight opportunities for biorefineries and industrial processors to convert melon and groundnut waste into commercial products. Practical adoption requires overcoming processing barriers linked to lignin and anti-nutritional compounds through specific biotechnological methods. Because the abstract synthesises diverse valorisation routes without detailing operational facilities or technical specifications, these technologies appear to sit at an early-stage to applied research level rather than being immediately market-ready.
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Waste biorefinery concept is gaining attention in converting wastes to industrial products. This is of paramount importance within sustainability paradigm of utilization of resources and contribution to emerging circular bioeconomy and responsible consumption. Among the vast resources that can be up-graded through value-addition are agrowastes that are generated through processing of crops. Agrowastes contain rich compounds, but the presence of complex molecules such as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin and anti-nutritional compounds that include cyanogenic glycosides, oxalates, phytates and trypsin inhibitors limits their utilization. Thus, they are often disposed in large quantities in the environment in manners that contribute to pollution. However, with increased awareness about detrimental effects of burning and burying of agrowastes, coupled with developments in circular bioeconomy that focus on ‘no waste’ generation mantra, various technologies have been developed to valorize these wastes into useful products. Among such wastes are melon seed shell, groundnut shell and groundnut peel. This review documents valorization of aforementioned agrowastes through various biotechnological routes to create different products. Until now, there is no review on their valorization unlike vast reviews on the utilization of melon and groundnut cakes. The report addresses issues that can ensure better utilization of these wastes for the attainment of some sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, particularly good health and well-being (SDG 3), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9), responsible consumption and production (SDG 12) and action against climate change (SDG 13).
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DOI: 10.1016/j.clcb.2023.100039
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