Abstract:The vast and ever-growing amount of agricultural and food wastes has become a major concern throughout the whole world. Therefore, strategies for their processing and value-added reuse are needed to enable a sustainable utilization of feedstocks and reduce the environmental burden. By-products of potato, tomato, cereals and olive arise in significant amounts in European countries and are consequently of high relevance. Due to their composition with various beneficial ingredients, the waste products can be valorized by different techniques leading to economic and environmental advantages. This paper focuses on the waste generation during industrial processing of potato, tomato, cereals and olives within the European Union and reviews state-of-the-art technologies for their valorization. Furthermore, current applications, future perspectives and challenges are discussed.

Abstract:There is increasing research towards the substitution of petrochemicals by sustainable components. Biopolymers such as proteins, polysaccharides, and lipids derive from a variety of crop sources and most promisingly from waste streams generated during their processing by the agro food industry. Among those, proteins of different types such as whey, casein, gelatin, wheat gluten, soy protein or zein present a potential beyond the food and feed industry for the application in packaging. The general protein hydrophilicity promotes a good compatibility to polar surfaces, such as paper, and a good barrier to apolar gases, such as oxygen and carbon dioxide. The present review deals with the development of protein-based coatings and films. It includes relevant discussion for application in paper or board products, as well as an outlook on its future industrial potential. Proteins with suitable functionalities as food packaging materials are described as well as the different technologies for processing the coatings and the current state of the art about the coating formulations for selectively modulating barrier, mechanical, surface and end of life properties. Some insights onto regulations about packaging use, end of life and perspectives of such natural coating for decreasing the environmental impact of packages are given.

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Whey protein is an excellent barrier material, potentially providing the low oxygen permeability and water vapour transmission rate required for packaging materials for sensitive foods. A topical issue is how to reduce the permeability of the whey protein-based layers. One possible strategy is to apply crosslinking agents. In the present study, the enzyme transglutaminase (TG) was used for this purpose, and the following properties have been measured: oxygen permeability, water vapour transmission rate, effective water vapour diffusion, sorption and permeation coefficients, swellability, light transmission and surface energy. The use of TG was found to reduce the oxygen permeability, reduce the water vapour transmission rate and reduce the effective water vapour diffusion coefficient of the whey protein layers. This study also showed that it was possible to use sorption experiments to approximate the water vapour transmission rates. This work is novel because it deals with the packaging-related properties of whey films crosslinked with TG. Previous studies have focused on the influence of TG on protein formulations or on the measurement of film properties, which is of little relevance for packaging applications.