Citrus processing by-products: an overlooked repository of bioactive compounds

Abstract

Citrus fruits contain plethora of bioactive compounds stored in edible as well as inedible part. Since, citrus fruits are processed mainly for juice, the residues are disposed in wastelands, hence, plenty of nutritional potential goes in vain. But if utilized wisely, the bioactive phytochemicals in citrus by-products have the ability to revolutionize the functional food industry. In the present review, the composition of citrus by-products in terms of bioactive components and their health benefits has been reviewed. Various extraction techniques used to extract these bioactives has been discussed and a brief overview of purification and utilization of the extracted compounds, in food and nutraceutical industry is also presented. Bioactives in citrus by-products are higher than the peeled fruit, which can be extracted, isolated and incorporated into food systems for development of health foods. From the studies reviewed, it was observed that research reported on utilization of citrus by-products is limited to mainly research labs; proper scale-up process and its adequate research commercialization is the need of hour to transform these bioactives into economical functional ingredients.

Keywords:

• Citrus by-products
• biorefining
• bioactive compounds
• extraction techniques
• nutrition
• functional foods

Acknowledgements

Further, the infrastructural support provided by Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology (SLIET), for carrying out the research is also acknowledged.

Author contributions

Samandeep Kaur: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. Parmjit S. Panesar: Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. Harish K. Chopra: Resources and Supervision.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

Authors would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) under research scheme 38(1491)/19/EMR-II.