Green processing of seafood waste biomass towards blue economy

• Published in: Current research in environmental sustainability Vol. 4; p. 100164
• Main Author: Venugopal, Vazhiyil
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 2022; Elsevier
• Subjects: Bio-refining; Blue economy; Circular bioeconomy; Green processing; Seafood sustainability; Seafood waste biomass; Bio-refining; Green processing; Blue economy; Circular bioeconomy; Seafood sustainability; Seafood waste biomass
• ISSN: 2666-0490; 2666-0490
• DOI: 10.1016/j.crsust.2022.100164

Seafood production in required quantities is facing increasing pressures due to reasons such as rising population, increasing demand, overfishing, landing of by-catch, climate change-related biodiversity changes, extinction of species and others. At the same time, industrial production of value added fishery products generates significant amounts of nutrient-rich discards, besides voluminous amount of process effluents. These discards, by-catch and effluents are rich sources of nutrients, industrially important ingredients and also bio-energy. Developments in marine biotechnology offer novel eco- friendly green processes for bio-refining of discarded seafood portions. This article discusses potentials of green processing for the valorization of seafood discards and process effluents towards zero waste that can improve sustainable seafood supply chain. The green processes generally make use of bioconversions of discards to release components attached to food matrices, which are extracted by suitable downstream processing techniques. Algal biotechnology and biorefinery-based approaches have significant scope for commercial scale processing of seafood discards. Because of their functional nature, the isolated products can have valuable applications in health, therapeutic and industries in other fields. Green processing can encourage zero-waste seafood processing, environmental protection, blue economy and has potential to realize the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs) of the United nations, particularly the SDG #12.3.
•Seafood production is associated with generation of large amounts of waste biomass responsible for huge nutritional losses•The waste biomass can be source of valuable nutrients and also other industrial compounds including bioenergy•Green processing can help eco-friendly utilization of the waste•Algal technology and biorefinery can recover the compounds on a commercial scale•Green processing helps improve blue economy and achieve Sustainable Development Goal #12.3 of the United Nations