{"title":"Valorization of Agricultural Residues to Valuable Products: A Circular Bioeconomy Approach.","authors":"Stefan Shilev, Ivelina Neykova, Slaveya Petrova","doi":"10.1007/10_2025_276","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Intensive agricultural production generates a lot of residues yearly, exhausting and depleting the soils and accumulating pesticides and mineral fertilizers. Although introducing the no-till technologies is related to the reduction of tillage, leaving most of the plant residues on the field and decreasing fertigation, the global crop residues are estimated to be 2800 million tons per year. They could be successfully utilized via several approaches integrated into the circular bioeconomy concept. Thus, stopping the existing vicious circle of digging most of the primary materials such as fossil fuels, the vast application of chemical fertilizers, gaining increased or restored biodiversity, capturing CO<sub>2</sub> into the soils and enhancing the organic content, having cleaner underground waters, soils and crop production, and finally improved quality of life. The transformation of these residues into value-added products faces various technological and commercialization difficulties that limit their fuller utilization. In the present chapter, we aim to describe the production of agricultural residues in the EU and present their properties and technologies for biological valorization. In addition, the potential risks associated with the micro- and nano-plastics content of agricultural residues are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":7198,"journal":{"name":"Advances in biochemical engineering/biotechnology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Advances in biochemical engineering/biotechnology","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/10_2025_276","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Intensive agricultural production generates a lot of residues yearly, exhausting and depleting the soils and accumulating pesticides and mineral fertilizers. Although introducing the no-till technologies is related to the reduction of tillage, leaving most of the plant residues on the field and decreasing fertigation, the global crop residues are estimated to be 2800 million tons per year. They could be successfully utilized via several approaches integrated into the circular bioeconomy concept. Thus, stopping the existing vicious circle of digging most of the primary materials such as fossil fuels, the vast application of chemical fertilizers, gaining increased or restored biodiversity, capturing CO2 into the soils and enhancing the organic content, having cleaner underground waters, soils and crop production, and finally improved quality of life. The transformation of these residues into value-added products faces various technological and commercialization difficulties that limit their fuller utilization. In the present chapter, we aim to describe the production of agricultural residues in the EU and present their properties and technologies for biological valorization. In addition, the potential risks associated with the micro- and nano-plastics content of agricultural residues are discussed.
期刊介绍:
Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology reviews actual trends in modern biotechnology. Its aim is to cover all aspects of this interdisciplinary technology where knowledge, methods and expertise are required for chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, chemical engineering and computer science. Special volumes are dedicated to selected topics which focus on new biotechnological products and new processes for their synthesis and purification. They give the state-of-the-art of a topic in a comprehensive way thus being a valuable source for the next 3 - 5 years. It also discusses new discoveries and applications.