Microbial Valorization of Tomato Waste for the Extraction of Carotenoids: Food Applications

Globally, agricultural-food industrial waste has become a major concern for environmental health. Valorization techniques play an important role to solve many problems of waste disposal. As tomatoes are the most commonly used vegetables in the world, more amount of pomace peel and seeds are produced from the tomato processing industry, the benefit of using tomato waste is that it improves environmental sustainability by reducing pollution and it is also an income to the producers. The consumers’ perception for tomato bioactive components which prevent the cancer and chronic diseases attributed to their antioxidant activity due to the presence of carotenoids, leads to enhanced tomato consumpion. Not only bioactive components, but tomatoes are also the richest sources of carbohydrates, proteins and dietary fiber, the important component in the dietary fiber is the insoluble fiber that is used as an ingredient for functional foods. With the fermentation, the bioactive peptides were produced with the tomato seeds. The value-added products from tomato waste add many nutrients to the diet which provides the body with antioxidants, fibers, and some vitamins. The tomato pomace and its processing is an opportunity to produce commercially viable carotenoids, lycopene, and astaxanthins that are having diversified applications in food, feed, cosmetics, and also pharmaceutical applications. The valuable bioactive components are revalorized and incorporated into the different functional ingredients. The different techniques in the valorization of tomatoes are chemical, physical, microbial/biotechnological, and enzymatic methods. With different fermentation optimization processes, the bio-availability and bio-accessibility of carotenoids can be improved. The current bioactive extraction techniques from tomato wastes, applications, future perspectives, and challenges have been discussed in this chapter.