Suchergebnisse

[Background] Food waste management is a key issue to global food security and friendly environmental governance. Worldwide, one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted along the food supply chain, primary production and food processing representing the most significant loses. Therefore, the need to achieve zero waste production schemes is becoming a priority to meet Sustainable Development Goals. Increasing evidence points towards vegetable food waste as a rich source of a wide array of carbohydrate structures and fibres providing the opportunity to identify and develop alternative approaches to valorize agro-food waste. ; [Scope and approach] This review describes the valorization of vegetable waste and by-products via production of (novel) substrates targeted to gut microbiota modulation, emphasizing the importance of raw materials and structural-functional properties of carbohydrates. Furthermore, we propose a novel framework for the rational selection of vegetable sources with potential prebiotic activity, based on machine learning and other computational tools applied to available literature and public database information. ; [Key findings and conclusions] Integration of the body of knowledge within the field of vegetable food waste valorization, from different perspectives, allows a rational selection of carbohydrate-based substrates with promising prebiotic activities. By exploring the interactions among dietary fibre and gut microbial ecosystems using computational tools fed with structural, functional and genomic data, we can identify substrates with potential to selectively stimulate gut commensals, in agreement with experimental evidence. Our approach establishes a new framework that can be extended to a wide range of commensal microbes and carbohydrate structures. ; The work in our research groups was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 818368 (MASTER), and the grants RTI 2018-095021-J-I00 (funded by (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE), AGL 2017-84614-C2-1-R and AGL 2016-78311-R (funded by (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE). Carlos Sabater acknowledges his Postdoctoral research contract funded by the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA) and Postdoctoral research contract Juan de la Cierva-Formación from Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FJC 2019-042125-I). ; Peer reviewed

Comprehensive chemical characterization of nine mono-varietal apple pomaces obtained from the production of ciders with PDO is described. They were rich in essential minerals, fibers (35–52.9 %), and polyphenols. High levels in GalA (11.8–21.6 %), revealed the suitability of these apple pomaces as efficient sources of pectins. Extracted pectins showed high variability in monomer composition, with degrees of methylesterification, strongly associated with pectins functional properties, ranging from 58 to 88 %. For a subset of apple pomace varieties, pectin extraction was accomplished by conventional acid heat treatment or ultrasound. Despite ultrasound-assisted extraction did not improve pectin yield, it minimized levels of "non-pectin" components as revealed by the low content of Glc/Man, leading to the obtainment of high-purity pectin. Our work highlights the key role played by the selection of the apple variety to streamline the potential food applications (gelling/thickening agents or prebiotics) of the extracted pectins that largely depend on their structural features. ; The research performed was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 818368 (MASTER), the grants from MICINN AGL2016-78311-R and AGL2017-84614-C2-1-R, and the grants from the Spanish State Research Agency RTI2018-095021-J-I00 and RTA2017-00102-C03-01 (funded by MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE).