Perspectives of Pineapple Wastes for Generation of Value Added Products

Abstract

There is huge accumulation of agro-industrial waste-materials generated by the milling, brewing and various agriculture and food based industries which in total amount to about 500 million tons per year in India. Most of these by-products contain three major structural polymers such as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. A high proportion of this waste material is carbohydrate and phenolic in nature. The vast accumulation of this kind of biomass not only results in the deterioration of the environment, but also a huge amount of potentially important materials are lost. Biological degradation, now-a-days, has become an increasingly popular alternative for the treatment of agricultural, industrial, organic as well as toxic wastes. Pineapple by-products resulting from the processing of pineapple being about 60 % of the weight of the original pineapple fruit in the form of peeled skin, core, crown end, etc is not utilized and discharged as wastage causing problems of disposal and pollution. The dry matter content of pineapple waste is around 10 %, composed of about 96 % organic matter and 4 % inorganic matter. Cellulose and hemicellulose being the major constituents can be referred to as valuable resources for a number of reasons, mainly due to the fact that they can be bio-converted easily into valuable products. Pineapple waste can be used as the important source for bioconversion process towards the production of various value-added products such as ethanol, phenolic anti-oxidants, Phenolic flavor compounds, organic acids, biogas and fiber production.