Recent evolution in green technologies for effective valorization of food and agricultural wastes

The unprecedented growth in the world’s population has simultaneously intensified the demand for food. There is a significant growth in agricultural production to cope with food demand. Altogether, the enhanced agricultural and food production has led to the generation of a tremendous amount of waste further becoming a threat to the environment and mankind. Therefore, it has become essential to persuade toward promising green technologies to mitigate such challenges. This chapter is focused on recent green technologies for the valorization of food and agricultural waste. Several thermochemical conversions are outlined in this chapter, and an approach attempted to justify their application in processing food and agricultural wastes. Furthermore, some biological conversion methods such as supercritical carbon dioxide extraction of secondary metabolites; and different fermentation, anaerobic digestion, and enzymatic methods are elaborated with the specific examples. These thermochemical and biochemical conversion techniques provide various efficient routes for the valorization of different agro- and food-based wastes producing certain value-added products like bio‑hydrogen, bio-methane, carbon dioxide, sugars, platform chemicals, bio-alcohols, bio-oil, and secondary metabolites. The valorization processes in greener ways provide sustainability toward the environment and energy securities.