Pages: 28

The world today is confronted with numerous challenges of climate shifts, pollution and biodiversity losses besides the need for sustainable production for the ever-escalating populations. Natural product chemistry has a vital role to play in overcoming the challenge of food security with safer options in the agricultural industry. Amongst the different pathogens affecting production, plant-parasitic nematodes are economically important pathogens decreasing the quality and quantity of the yield produced. Current technologies for the management of these new methods are held accountable for several environmental problems or the release of hazardous substances and the generation of toxic products. The rich plant wealth is bestowed with a number of natural compounds which have potent biological entities. These biologically active plant products represent excellent scaffolds for the synthesis of eco-friendly chemicals for their use by the agrochemical industry. The present chapter focuses on the exploitation of these natural compounds as green candidates for the management of the plant-parasitic nematodes infesting different crops and decreasing their yields. The overview of the progress in the natural product chemistry discipline, its role and the potential of the different environmental friendly phytochemicals for their application has been outlined in this chapter.

Pages: 27

Regardless of advanced agronomical practices deployed, pest management remains a serious concern in agriculture. Indeed, 40% of the world’s food supply is ruined by various pests (e.g., pathogens, insects, weeds, rodents, etc.). To circumvent this problem, the exponential increase in the production of chemical pesticides happened over the years and could partially accomplish the purpose of efficient pest control. However, the indiscriminate utilization of conventional pesticides raised concerns about their adverse environmental impacts, tainting the yield as well as generating broad-spectrum resistance to pests. Considering these facts, ‘Green Technology (GT)’, also known as ‘Environment Healing Technology’ or ‘Clean Technology’, has gained immense popularity in recent times. GT is a safe, natural and eco-friendly approach that not only manages the pest attack efficiently but also maintains ecological homeostasis by minimizing the dependency on unsafe chemical pesticides. This chapter is an effort to compile the existing GTs implications that not only prevents the otherwise inevitable pest attack on the agronomical important crop but also serve as noble alternatives to hazardous chemical pesticides.

Pages: 12

Green fertilizers are natural plant materials that can be applied to soil to increase and improve its prosperities and fertility. Green fertilizers could help the world to save money, protect plants, decline soil toxicity, improve plant productivity, and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, in comparison to other products that cause serious health problems, such as cancer and kidney diseases, these products are safe for human health. Natural plants serve as ecofriendly green-fertilizer products to aid in transforming the plant into a productive and sustainable enterprise. Such green fertilizers could also overcome the problems of synthetic and chemical fertilizers that have become a serious challenge, especially in some countries that are suffering from ecological pressure and pollution. Green fertilizers are natural substances that can be added to the soil, including vermicompost, seaweed extracts, bird guano, as well as a variety of other substances. This chapter highlights the green fertilizer technologies used in agriculture and focuses on the main two examples of organic green fertilizer used in farming, such as seaweeds and vermicompost.

Pages: 13

Organic food production is defined as cultivation without the application of chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides or genetically modified organisms, growth hormones, and antibiotics. Organic agriculture is gaining momentum as an alternative method to the modern system. Organic farming can provide quality food without adversely affecting the soil’s health and the environment; however, a concern is whether large-scale organic farming will produce enough food for India’s large population. There is a need to identify suitable crops/products on a regional basis for organic production that has international market demands. India is a country that is bestowed with indigenous skills and potential for growth in organic agriculture. Although India was far behind in the adoption of organic farming due to several reasons, presently it has achieved rapid growth in organic agriculture and has now become one of the largest organic producers in the world. Therefore, organic farming has a great impact on the health of a nation, like India, by ensuring sustainable development. This article highlights a brief understanding of the importance of organic farming for the sustainable production of food in agriculture without compromising the needs to meet future generations.

Pages: 18

Food production needs to be doubled by 2050 in order to pursue the rapid increase of the world population, and at the same time reduce the application of mineral fertilizers and chemical pesticides in agriculture to sustain and enhance human health. Microbial diversity and available culturable microbes can be used as eco-friendly alternatives to reduce inorganic fertilizers and pesticides used in agriculture. They can increase yields without polluting the environment for human health protection. Farming with microbes benefits the whole agricultural industry from large corporations to small organic producers, and microbes can be used with all cultivated plants from food crops to horticultural plants and with all fields from large field monocultures to greenhouses. This chapter provides an overview of the useful microbes used in agriculture, the reciprocal interactions between microbes and the environment, the role of these microbes in reducing the use of chemicals and improving human health, and the use of biotechnology to enhance the impact of these microbes.

Pages: 12

Marine algae are a diverse group of organisms that carry out the process of photosynthesis by capturing energy from light. Depending upon their size, they are classified into microalgae and macro-algae. Microalgae include Bacillariophyta (diatoms), dinoflagellates, blue-green algae, etc., whereas macroalgae (seaweeds) include brown red and green algae. They occupy intertidal and littoral to sublittoral zones on hard substrate or rocks and mostly constitute green, brown and red algae of different communities. They are considered to be excellent fertilizers in different aspects of agriculture and have good proficiency in improving the chemical and physical properties of soil. They are also reported to be rich in polysaccharides, which act as perfect chelating agents with various micro-essential elements providing important nutritional value to the host plant. They enhance plant growth in different environmental stresses, showing remarkable responses as conditioners to improve the productivity and yield of crops. This book chapter, therefore, is considered to be the first of its kind that summarizes and highlights the potentiality of using marine algae and their products in integrated pest management, improving the plant growth and biological controls of some agricultural diseases for promising sustainable agricultural technology.

Pages: 39

Increased awareness of environmental concerns and innovative green technologies have paved the way towards the development of biological conversion routes and sustainable processes to produce bio-based platform chemicals, biopolymers, bioenergy and materials employing green manufacturing. Research has focused on the valorization of agricultural and industrial side streams, including food waste produced at different stages of supply chains. Techno-economic efficiency could be achieved through the development of biorefinery concepts leading to the production of multiple products. Restructuring of conventional processes through the development and establishment of modern and green technologies i.e. bioprocessing, water catalysis, microwave and ultrasound activation, pulse electric field, supercritical extraction, etc., is required to facilitate the transition to the bio-economy era. This chapter focuses on the fractionation and bioconversion of coffee and citrus processing waste to produce value-added co-products and fermentative products highlighting related studies over the last 10 years. Only processes that have been entirely based on green technologies combined with green solvent systems are included. A thorough insight into green fractionation methods and technologies as well as sustainable biotechnological routes is provided. Issues of sustainability and bio-economy are also addressed.

Pages: 48

Over the last years, various food technologies have been explored and applied in the extraction processes to provide safe and nutritive products. The application of emerging technologies, such as high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed electric field, ultrasound, microwave, pressurized fluids, high-speed homogenization, supercritical fluid processing and enzymes, have attracted much attention as an alternative to conventional ones promoting sustainability in the food industry. Moreover, a new generation of green solvents, called deep eutectic solvent (DES), has emerged and has found numerous applications in the extraction of bioactive compounds from various plant sources. These novel technologies allow a significant reduction in the overall extraction time and solvent volume promoting energy-saving while ensuring food safety and sufficient benefits for the food industry. The aim of this chapter was to discuss the mechanisms, principles and applications of green emerging technologies in the extraction of oil from oilseeds and bioactive compounds, including sterols, squalene, phenolic compounds and flavonoids from plant sources, offering an updated glimpse of the huge technological effort which is being developed at educational and industrial-scale.

Pages: 27

The burgeoning global population in the last several centuries created an urgent need to develop sustainable food production, processing and storage techniques. Rapid industrialization has made the modern day food chain more complicated and is comprised of producers, processors, distributors and retailers. The global socioeconomic balance can be maintained with a sufficient supply of healthy and nutritious food. But extensive production of the crop comes with serious environmental concerns, such as overuse of resources, biodiversity exploitation, aquatic eutrophication, water shortages, climate change and global warming. The introduction of green technologies in food production and processing has been at the forefront, which ensures environmental sustainability, better use of resources and reduced emission of greenhouse gases. This chapter discusses the principles of green chemistry and emerging green technologies in the food production and processing industry, which maximize efficiency and reduces environmental and health hazard.

Pages: 20

Food products get contaminated during the extensive processing and storage of food derived from animals and agricultural practices. Toxins are induced in several ways, including fungal growth, heat exposure, and thermal reaction between various functional groups present in food ingredients. The toxins generated by fungal communities (mycotoxins) can withstand conventional sterilization methods and thus remain a major concern for food industries. Mycotoxins pose a multitude of health hazards as they are carcinogenic and mutagenic. Therefore, a new challenge for the food industry remains in ensuring consumer safety as well as organoleptic characteristics of food items. Emerging green technologies utilize green phytochemicals, nanocomposites, irradiation, ultrasound, pulsed light, pulsed electric field, high-pressure processing, and cold plasma for preventing toxin formation in food items. These technologies have gained much attention in the last decade owing to their eco-friendly status, an advantage over thermal processes and efficacy for retaining food functionality without posing any harmful effects. In this chapter, we have comprehensively discussed the current and emerging green technologies employed for detoxification during food production and processing.

Pages: 24

Since 1990, new analytical methods have been developed to eliminate or reduce the use of harmful substances to the environment and human health. The traditional methods of analysis normally evaluate a single analyte at a time, require several preparation steps, use toxic reagents, and are time-consuming and harmful to the environment. These methods have been substituted by analytical techniques that do not require sample preparation or the use of toxic solvents. Thus, techniques based on vibrational spectroscopy and methods that use hyperspectral imaging and RGB imaging system along with magnetic resonance spectroscopy are in compliance with the Green Analytical Chemistry (GAC). However, the data generated by these techniques are complex and numerous, requiring the use of chemometric tools to interpret the results. This chapter will address the GAC Principles and Challenges for Food Analysis, the use of green techniques in food analysis, such as Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR) and Medium Infrared Spectroscopy (MIR), coupled with Hyperspectral Images, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) Image, Raman spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), which make use of chemometric tools in data analysis and examples of the application of these green technologies in food analysis.

Pages: 15

The importance of agrochemicals is undeniable to the world’s food production. However, several recent studies have been proving that exposure to those chemical products presents negative effects on human life. This information made the environmental and health agencies increase the inspection to detect agrochemical residues at levels above that established by the legal directives to control it, maximum residues levels (MRL). In this context, the scientific community has been developing reliable methods to determine agrochemical residues in food that have to be in agreement with the green analytical methods principles once traditional methods of sample collection, extraction and isolation produce a high amount of toxic waste and spend a lot of time. Considering the expected low concentration of these residues sensitive analytical techniques are required, such as liquid and gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy. In order to reduce the volume of chemical reagents, chemometric techniques such as multivariate curve resolution have been used. Therefore, the use of green methods to quantify agrochemical residues in low concentrations in complex matrices as food has been presenting a real challenge in food analysis.

Pages: 20

This chapter discusses the production of functional food ingredients using green technologies. The main categories of functional food ingredients are bioactive compounds, such as phenolics, antioxidants, vitamins, prebiotic and probiotic compounds, and essential oils. The processes to obtain functional ingredients play an important role in maintaining not only their biological functionality but also their quality and sensory attributes. The conventional methods for functional ingredients recovery were different extraction techniques, such as hydrodistillation, steam distillation or Soxhlet extraction. The main drawbacks of these techniques are the chemical modifications of the functional ingredients due to the high temperatures involved, the formation of unwanted by-products due to thermal degradation and hydrolysis as well as the presence of organic solvents which are often toxic. Emerging or novel extraction methods often called ‘Green Technologies’ offer various advantages, such as the ability to work at relatively low temperatures, the reduced equipment size, ease of use, speed and low solvent consumption; all of which contribute to reducing environmental impact and cost. The conventional and green production technologies for each functional ingredient category are described and the characteristics of the ingredients produced using green technologies are compared to those produced traditionally.

Pages: 8

Food is the primary source of energy and nutrition for human survival. High-throughput approaches such as omics have linked the human diet with food for disease evaluation, metabolic behaviour, and long-term effects on human health. Proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics enable one to investigate biochemical associations. Using various system biology methodologies, new sources of important food supplements, their suitability, the behaviour of harvested food components, and their impact on the human body at the molecular level can be anticipated. Such interventions also allow the healthcare system to address complex genetic and non-genetic lethal disorders, lowering death rates and improving human life quality. The excessive load on environmental parameters can be balanced by opting for green technologies for foodomics discipline. Spectroscopy, ultra-pressure liquid chromatography, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were developed, and high-throughput technologies were also developed to store, predict, and exchange those results. In this chapter, we will try to explain the basic concepts of green chemistry in foodomics.