From Crop Residues and Agri-Food By-Products to Standardized Functional Ingredients: Sustainable Processing, Stabilisation and Scale-Up

Circular and sustainable agri-food systems require innovative green strategies to reduce agricultural and food waste, together with an effective recovery of bioactive substances and compounds. Agri-food by-products and crop remains are often rich in lipids, polyphenols, proteins, carotenoids, terpenes, dietary fibre, and other bioactive molecules. In any case, their effective conversion into functional, stable, and safe ingredients is limited by many challenges related to product standardisation, scalability, process sustainability, compound degradation, and extraction efficiency. Innovation in advanced post-harvest processing strategies offers new potentialities to transform these residuals into high-value components for nutraceutical applications and functional foods, contributing to circular bioeconomy objectives, including resource efficiency and waste reduction.This Research Topic aims to highlight innovative sustainable processing strategies that stabilise, transform and standardise crop residues and agri-food by-products into functional ingredients, with recovery of bioactive molecules as one outcome. Approaches that combine reduced environmental impact with technological effectiveness, including cascading or integrated biorefinery strategies, encapsulation, bioconversion, fermentation, drying, non-thermal processing, and green extraction, will be considered. Compositional and phytochemical characterisation is welcome when used to assess the effect of processing conditions on stability, safety, functionality, bioaccessibility, and bioactive retention. Contributions addressing the development of innovative standardised ingredients, techno-economic feasibility, life-cycle considerations, scale-up, and process optimisation are also encouraged. By integrating nutrition, circular bioeconomy approaches, food science, and process technology, this collection aims to support the translation of agri-food residues into value-added ingredients.This Research Topic welcomes Original Research and Review articles addressing the sustainable valorisation of crop residues and plant-derived agri-food by-products. Relevant themes include:- Stabilisation strategies such as traditional or innovative drying systems;- Enzymatic bioprocessing and fermentation;- Delivery systems and encapsulation;- Scale-up and process optimisation;- Techno-economic and life-cycle evaluations, including residue availability and supply-chain considerations where they inform process feasibility;- Emerging and green extraction technologies integrated with downstream stabilisation, formulation or scale-up, including extraction of lipids, polyphenols, proteins, carotenoids, pigments, fibres, and other bioactive compounds;- Effects of processing and stabilisation on bioactive retention and bioaccessibility;- Incorporation of recovered components into nutraceutical formulations or functional foods;- Shelf-life assessment, quality, and safety of innovative derived-products.- Studies comparing sustainable and conventional processing technologies, and studies with scale-up or techno-economic data, are particularly welcome. Manuscripts should clearly highlight the added value of the proposed valorisation approaches and their relevance to nutraceutical applications, nutrition, or food science. Topic editors: Dario Donno, Federica Turrini, Zoarilala Rinah Razafindrakoto Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86624/from-crop-residues-and-agri-food-by-products-to-standardized-functional-ingredients-sustainable-processing-stabilisation-and-scale-up