FEDKITO conference
12th September 2023
9am – 6pm
Event details
Professor Annalisa Tassoni (pictured below) from the University of Bologna in Italy will present the AgriLoop and PROLIFIC projects as a key note speaker at the towards circular economy in the agri-food sector: strategies and challenges – Final Conference of the FEDKITO project.
Abstract
Globally, a third of all food produced every year (~2.5 billion tons) is lost or wasted and ends up as co-products, residues and waste along the food chain (from field to fork). On the other end the projected global demand for proteins and bioactive compounds will be in 2030 well exceeding current production capacities, given the rising world population. Agro-industrial residual biomass, side streams and food production by-products may represent rich sources of valuable ingredients both for humans and animals. Yet their potential the routes for their full exploitation are still at an early stage.
Two European projects (PROLIFIC and AGRILOOP) are contributing to improve the knowledge on the recovery of significant amounts of proteins, polyphenols, polyesters and other valuable compounds from agricultural and food-processing residues and to develop integrated value-chains aiming at high-value industrial applications. These projects optimize, validate and scale up an integrated array of cascading green extraction processes starting, among others,
from legumes, fungi, coffee, tomato, grape and potato feedstocks. The extracted molecules, after being validated for their safety and composition, are tested for techno-functional activities to find several high-value applications in the food, packaging, cosmetic and feed sectors. The projects also assess the economical, environmental, societal, ethical, safety and regulatory implications of the newly created value chains.
PROLIFIC (2018-2022) was funded by BBI-JU under the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme (GA n. 790157).
AGRILOOP (2022-2026) was funded by European Union’s EU research and innovation programme, the UK Research and
Innovation fund under the UK government’s EU funding guarantee (GA n. 101081776) and The National Key Research and
Development Funds of China.