Editorial: Sustainable food processing: valorization of agro-waste-derived proteins, starch, and bioactives, and seaweeds for food packaging and product innovation

Abstract

Fig. 1: Integrated valorization pathway for sustainable food processing, illustrating the conversion of agro-waste and seaweeds into high-value proteins, starch, dietary fibres, bioactive compounds, and functional polysaccharides through green extraction technologies, followed by their application in active and intelligent food packaging and innovative food products, supporting circular bioeconomy, resource efficiency, food security, and environmental sustainability.Agro-waste is generated in substantial quantities throughout agricultural production, processing, and food manufacturing, creating significant environmental and economic challenges. Global waste generation is expected to reach over 2.6 billion tonnes by 2030, and 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050 (Lackner, & Besharati, 2025). Residues such as cereal bran and husks, fruit and vegetable peels, seeds, stalks, shells, and processing by-products are frequently discarded, burned, or poorly managed. Such practices can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, soil and water pollution, unpleasant odors, and the loss of potentially valuable nutrients and functional compounds (Kumari et al., 2026). However, growing interest in circular bioeconomy approaches has shifted the perspective from agro-waste as a disposal problem toward its recognition as a renewable and valuable resource.Many agricultural residues contain considerable amounts of proteins, starch, dietary fibers, lipids, minerals, phenolic compounds, pigments, and other bioactive constituents (Rof et al., 2026). Advances in green extraction, fractionation, fermentation, enzymatic processing, and biorefinery technologies have created opportunities to recover these components and convert them into high-value ingredients and functional materials. Agro-waste-derived proteins can be incorporated into food formulations, edible films, coatings, and biodegradable packaging, while starch can serve as a versatile matrix for developing sustainable packaging materials and functional food products (Pipliya et al., 2025). Phenolics, flavonoids, carotenoids, and other bioactives recovered from agricultural residues can provide antioxidant and antimicrobial functionality, supporting both food preservation and product innovation (Ali et al., 2025).The valorization of agro-waste therefore offers multiple benefits, including waste reduction, resource conservation, additional revenue generation for agricultural and food-processing sectors, and reduced dependence on fossil-based materials. Integrating efficient recovery technologies with safe, scalable, and economically viable processing strategies can transform agro-waste into a feedstock for next-generation food ingredients, packaging materials, and biobased products, thereby supporting a more sustainable and circular food system.Agro-industrial residues represent an important yet underutilized source of high-value biomolecules, including proteins, starch, dietary fibers, polyphenols, flavonoids, carotenoids, pigments, essential oils, and other bioactive compounds. Protein recoveries of 22% (muscle), 33% (head), 78% (viscera), 24% (skin), and 26% (tailfin) were achieved utilising pressurised liquid extraction; these values were 1.2-4.5 times greater than those produced from traditional stirred extraction (Li et al., 2022). A study suggested that, starch was isolated from the taro tuber peel byproduct and the particle size of native taro peel starch displayed ranging from 0.76 to 1.84 µm (Gupta et al., 2024). The most recent research is moving toward integrated and cascade biorefinery approaches, in which several classes of biomolecules are sequentially recovered from the same agro-waste stream rather than targeting a single compound. A study by Hurtado-Rios et al. (2026) identified polyphenols, natural pigments, dietary fibre and prebiotics, lipids, proteins and bioactive peptides as major high-value fractions obtainable from agro-industrial by-products and emphasized UAE, SFE and natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) as important green-recovery platforms. Similarly, Shawky et al. (2025) highlighted the potential of agricultural residues, post-harvest losses and food-processing by-products as sources of polyphenols, carotenoids, dietary fibres, bioactive peptides and lipids, supporting their conversion into functional foods, nutraceuticals, pharmaceutical ingredients and other valueadded products. Importantly, the 2026 review analyzed 98 eligible studies after screening 200 initially identified records, demonstrating the rapid expansion of research in this area (Hurtado-Rios et al., 2026). The current scientific trend is therefore shifting from simple waste disposal or single-compound extraction toward zero-waste/circular biorefineries, where multiple bioactive fractions are recovered through sequential green extraction, purification and stabilization. Such systems can improve resource efficiency and economic value, although scale-up remains constrained by matrix variability, extraction selectivity, solvent recovery, product stability, process economics and techno-environmental performance (Hurtado-Rios et al., 2026;Shawky et al., 2025).Seaweeds are emerging as a next-generation sustainable biomaterial because they combine rapid biomass production, renewability, biodegradability, and a rich composition of functional polysaccharides without requiring arable land or freshwater for cultivation. Their major structural polymers-alginate, agar, carrageenan, ulvan, agarose, laminarin and fucoidanprovide diverse chemical functionalities that can be converted into films, hydrogels, membranes, aerogels, fibers and composite materials. Recent research has particularly highlighted brown-seaweed-derived alginate as a promising precursor for biodegradable plastics, with functional additives, crosslinking agents and nanoscale reinforcements capable of substantially improving mechanical strength, water-barrier performance, antioxidant activity and antimicrobial functionality (Manikandan et al., 2025). A critical review further identified seaweed-derived bioplastics as promising alternatives to petroleum-based packaging because of their renewable origin, film-forming capacity, biodegradability and compatibility with solvent casting, extrusion and compression-moulding processes (Duarah et al., 2025). Beyond packaging, recent advances demonstrate that seaweed polysaccharides can be fabricated into 3D-printed scaffolds, electrospun fibres, microbeads and hydrogels, creating opportunities in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (Ghalsasi & Joddar, 2025).The latest direction is therefore shifting from using seaweed as a single-source polymer toward multifunctional and integrated biomaterial platforms for food packaging, biomedical engineering, agriculture and environmental applications. In food packaging, recent studies report that alginate, carrageenan, agar and ulvan films can be combined with plasticizers, nanoparticles, essential oils and other bioactive compounds to enhance flexibility, barrier properties, antioxidant and antimicrobial performance, thereby supporting active and intelligent packaging systems (Dhilipkumar et al., 2025;Rajamani & Khora, 2025). Importantly, seaweedderived biofilms as emerging materials for bioengineering, agriculture and environmental restoration, demonstrating the breadth of this marine biomass platform (Krishnan et al., 2024).The emerging scientific challenge is to translate these promising laboratory-scale materials into economically viable and scalable products while addressing variability in seaweed composition, extraction efficiency, moisture sensitivity, mechanical limitations, processing cost and end-oflife performance. Future seaweed biorefineries are therefore expected to integrate green extraction, cascade valorization, polymer modification, nanocomposite formation and life-cycle assessment, transforming seaweed into a multifunctional feedstock for a low-carbon circular bioeconomy.Sustainable food processing is defined as utilizing green technologies as an alternative to the traditional technologies which require high energy. Green technologies provide more environment friendly options which safeguard both the environment and the material quality.One such example is the use of ultrasound-and microwave-assisted extraction, especially when utilized with natural deep eutectic solvents has demonstrated remarkable efficacy, yielding over ten times more anthocyanins from mango peel waste than traditional acidified-ethanol extraction, while also enhancing antioxidant preservation (Kunhilintakath & Gada Chengaiyan, 2026). Green technologies for extraction have been extensively studied for the agricultural waste products and compared with various traditional methods, such as Soxhlet and maceration techniques (Chemat et al., 2017). However, pre-or post-processing is also important in such cases as drying and storage conditions, also significantly affects the extraction and deterioration of these compounds as most of them as heat labile (Gricenko et al., 2026;Patras et al., 2010).Food packaging also utilizes sustainable approaches such as electrospinning for heat-sensitive compounds, such as essential oil and plant gels into an active packaging film (Rabbani et al., 2026). Overall, it can be seen that green technologies are a multi-faceted field and can be used as per the requirements from preprocessing to processing to postprocessing.Food packaging is rapidly evolving from conventional passive barriers toward active, intelligent, biodegradable, and multifunctional systems that simultaneously protect food, extend shelf life, monitor quality, and reduce dependence on petroleum-derived plastics.Recent research has focused particularly on agro-waste-derived proteins, starch, cellulose, pectin and other polysaccharides, as well as seaweed polymers such as alginate, carrageenan and ulvan, which can be engineered into films, coatings, hydrogels and nanocomposites. A 2026 review highlighted that incorporation of antimicrobial agents, antioxidants, natural colourimetric indicators and nanofillers into biopolymer matrices can overcome limitations in mechanical strength and water resistance while providing active preservation and real-time freshness monitoring (Asrafali et al., 2026). Particularly promising is the use of seaweed polysaccharides, whose biodegradability, film-forming ability and compatibility with active compounds make them attractive for sustainable packaging of fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood and dairy products (Rajan et al., 2026). Recent research is also integrating biosensors, pHsensitive indicators, time-temperature indicators, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) to enable real-time assessment of food freshness and improve supply-chain decision-making (Sagar & Rani, 2026). Importantly, a 2026 experimental study demonstrated the potential of pumpkin-peel-derived carbon quantum dots incorporated into a biodegradable film, which showed better UV protection, reduced microbial growth and improved antioxidant preservation of cherry tomatoes compared with conventional plastic wrap, although moistureloss control remained a limitation. Collectively, these advances indicate that the future of food packaging lies in waste-derived biomaterials, seaweed polysaccharides, active bioactive delivery and AI-enabled intelligent sensing, although further work on food-contact safety, mechanical and moisture-barrier performance, scalability, life-cycle assessment and commercial cost is essential for industrial adoption (Asrafali et al., 2026;Duarah et al., 2025).Recently, agricultural wastes have been extensively used in food formulations, both on lab scale and commercial scale. Even many countries are making regulatory guidelines for the valorization of agricultural wastes into the development of functional food products or even functional packaging materials. One such recent study is the fortification at ingredient level, where sprouting often discarded date seeds prior to their addition to wheat flour significantly enhances the antioxidant levels of a staple meal with no processing intricacy (Altammami et al., 2026). Silva-Espíritu et al. (2026) tried developing alginate-based coating incorporating mango seed kernel, a by-product of mango processing to prolong the life of shelf-life of mango, hence providing a great example of circular economy. The coating does not have limit in mango preservation, but can be utilized into various food products, such as cooked meatballs for packaging as shown by (Kartheevan et al., 2026). These researches indicate that valorizing agro-wastes into a valuable product not only helps environment, but also provides natural fortificants for specific biomolecules, functional foods of high value and biomaterials, which can be used in packaging films.Despite showing clear advantages, its utilization at commercial level is still limited due to various reasons, such as insignificant yield, already developed processing plant and machineries which are not made for them and will require a high capital cost to modify them, etc. Furthermore, optimization of the whole processes is necessary after even minor modification in the formulation as any little change in processing condition may provide several fold changes in the final outcome as seen in a lab study by Kunhilintakath & Gada Chengaiyan (2026). In packaging film industry, a little change in formulation may result in a significant change in the barrier and mechanical properties, which need to be considered and will eventually increase the manufacturing costs and complexity and requirement of additional equipment for extraction, purification of the chemical/bioactive compounds from the agricultural wastes (Rabbani et al., 2026). Another important challenge is to track and check the migration of these compounds into the food products it is packaged within and is of prime importance as this may result in various problems if not checked properly (Gupta et al., 2024).Finally, it is important to follow the regulatory guidelines and food safety guidelines along with allergen labeling for specific coatings used and their migration may whether affect the food or not is also important.