Fruit Wastes as Promising Sources of Starch: Extraction, Properties, and Applications

Fruits are widely consumed and play a crucial role in diet. Furthermore, changes in dietary habits and growing world population have promoted the increase in demand of this product, which consequently increase their wastes. Besides, the fruit processing, including juice processing, pulp extraction, jams, and frozen pulp, also generates significant amounts of waste. Wastes include skin, pulp, seed waste, and pomace, which are rich in value-added compounds like starch. The search for new starch sources has been motivated by three main reasons: growing market demand; industry demand for new starches with different physicochemical, structural, and functional properties than conventional starch sources; and food supply to meet the increase of world population. The principal conventional sources of starch are cereal and tubers. However, fruit wastes can contain significant amounts of starch that can be better explored. Fruit waste starches have unique features and can expand the possible range of starch uses in industry. This review explores fruit wastes, including kiwifruit, pineapple, mango, litchi, tamarind, longan, loquat, annatto, jackfruit, avocado, apple, and banana as new sources of starch, and also discusses their extraction methods, properties, and potential uses.