The food sector includes several large industries such as canned food, pasta, flour, frozen products, and beverages. Those industries transform agricultural raw materials into added-value products. The fruit and vegetable industry is the largest and fastest-growing segment of the world agricultural production market, which commercialize various products such as juices, jams, and dehydrated products, followed by the cereal industry products such as chocolate, beer, and vegetable oils are produced. Similarly, the root and tuber industry produces flours and starches essential for the daily diet due to their high carbohydrate content. However, the processing of these foods generates a large amount of waste several times improperly disposed of in landfills. Due to the increase in the world’s population, the indiscriminate use of natural resources generates waste and food supply limitations due to the scarcity of resources, increasing hunger worldwide. The circular economy offers various tools for raising awareness for the recovery of waste, one of the best alternatives to mitigate the excessive consumption of raw materials and reduce waste. The loss and waste of food as a raw material offers bioactive compounds, enzymes, and nutrients that add value to the food cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. This paper systematically reviewed literature with different food loss and waste by-products as animal feed, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical products that strongly contribute to the paradigm shift to a circular economy. Additionally, this review compiles studies related to the integral recovery of by-products from the processing of fruits, vegetables, tubers, cereals, and legumes from the food industry, with the potential in SARS-CoV-2 disease and bacterial diseases treatment.

Banana is a fruit grown mainly in tropical countries of the world. After harvest, almost 60% of banana biomass is left as waste. Worldwide, about 114.08 million metric tons of banana waste-loss are produced, leading to environmental problems such as the excessive emission of greenhouse gases. These wastes contain a high content of paramount industrial importance, such as cellulose, hemicellulose and natural fibers that various processes can modify, such as bacterial fermentation and anaerobic degradation, to obtain bioplastics, organic fertilizers and biofuels such as ethanol, biogas, hydrogen and biodiesel. In addition, they can be used in wastewater treatment methods by producing low-cost biofilters and obtaining activated carbon from rachis and banana peel. Furthermore, nanometric fibers commonly used in nanotechnology applications and silver nanoparticles useful in therapeutic cancer treatments, can be produced from banana pseudostems. The review aims to demonstrate the contribution of the recovery of banana production waste-loss towards a circular economy that would boost the economy of Latin America and many other countries of emerging economies.

Cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana L.) is one of the main exotic fruits in demand throughout the world market. However, this fruit has problems with physical and microbial decay causing losses up to thirty percent during post-harvest stage and market storage. As an alternative for conservation, technologies based on edible coatings of biopolymers incorporating essential oils have been developed. In this paper we studied the effect of edible coatings based on chitosan (CS) and Ruta graveolens L. essential oil (RGEO) at different concentrations applied on the surface gooseberries at 18 ± 2 °C. The emulsions exhibited a reduction in the viscosity and the particle size with the increasing in the RGEO amount (from 124.7 cP to 26.0 cP for CS + RGEO 0.5% and CS + RGEO 1.5%, respectively). A lower weight loss was obtained for fruits coated with CS + RGEO 0.5% (12.7%) as compared to the uncoated (15%), while the maturity index increased in a lower amount for CS + RGEO coated than the uncoated fruits. The mesophyll growth was delayed three days after the coating applications for CS + RGEO 1.0% and 1.5%. At day twelve of the coating process, fruits with CS + RGEO 1.5% presented only 3.1 Log UFC/g of aerobic mesophylls and 2.9 Log UFC/g of molds and yeasts, while the uncoated fruits presented 4.2 Log UFC/g of aerobic mesophylls and 4.0 Log UFC/g of molds and yeasts, demonstrating a microbial barrier of the coatings incorporating RGEO in a concentration dependent manner. The CS + RGEO coating also preserve the antioxidant property of case gooseberries after twelve days of treatment under storage according to the 2,2′-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2′-azinobis-(3-ethyl-benzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) (ABTS) results. It was demonstrated by the ABTS method that T5 antioxidant capacity from day one to day twelve only decreases from 55% to 44%, while in the uncoated fruits (T1) the antioxidant capacity decreased from 65% to 18%. On the other hand, using the DPPH method the reduction was from 73% to 24% for the uncoated samples and 55% to 43% for T5. From the sensorial analysis, we recommend the use of CS + RGEO 0.5% that was still accepted by the panelists after the sixth day of application. These results show the potential application of these coatings as postharvest treatment under storage and low temperature conditions during twelve days of treatment for cape gooseberry fruits.

The synthesis and solid-state characterization of a series of cyclic/acyclic molecular rotors derived from naturally occurring steroidal 12-oxosapogenins are described. The bridged molecular rotors with rigid steroidal frameworks were obtained by employing ring-closing metathesis (RCM) as a key step. The X-ray diffraction technique was employed for determination and refinement of the crystal and molecular structure of selected models giving good quality single crystals. In the case of the bridged hecogenin molecular rotor 11E for which poor quality crystals were obtained, an NMR crystallography approach was used for fine refinement of the structure. Solid state NMR spectroscopic techniques were applied for the study of local molecular dynamics of the featured acyclic/cyclic molecular rotors. Analysis of 13 C principal components of chemical shift tensors and chemical shift anisotropy (CSA) as well as heteronuclear 1 H− 13 C dipolar couplings (DC) unambiguously proved that aromatic rings located in the space within the rigid steroidal framework both for cyclic and acyclic rotors are under kHz exchange regime. Experimental results were confirmed by theoretical calculations of rotation barrier on the density functional theory level. Small distinctions in the values of CSA and DC for the rotors under investigation are explained on the basis of differences in their molecular structures.

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