Exploitation of agricultural and forestry waste: from the recovery of bioactive compounds for nutraceutical applications to the production of innovative materials
type: CreativeWork
description: Agricultural and food industries generate substantial waste that, remaining underexploited, entails environmental, economic, and social issues. The shells of Pistacia vera, Prunus dulcis, Corylus avellana, and Juglans regia species represent the most abundant by-products and have the potential to be further processed into value-added nutraceutical ingredients and other innovative materials. In this thesis, dry fruit shells have been employed as sources of valuable bioactive compounds. Specifically, the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) coupled with Box-Behnken design (BBD) models were adopted to optimize entirely eco-sustainable microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) protocols. The optimized shell extracts exhibited the highest total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant/antiradical activity. Furthermore, in this thesis, MAE method was applied for the first time to recover antioxidants from pistachio and hazelnut shells. Although MAE was previously employed to extract bioactive compounds from almond and walnut shells, the herein optimized MAE conditions led to higher phenolics recovery rates. Moreover, MAE protocols were carefully designed to support their application at an industrial level, where the extraction of natural products using microwave irradiation is already a reality. The phytochemical composition of the optimized shell extracts was determined by hyphenated techniques, namely high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization ion-trap tandem mass spectrometric (HPLC/ESI-MS/MS) analyses. A thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis of mass spectrometric data allowed the identification of phenolic compounds and lipids as the predominant organic constituents in all the extracts. Remarkably, the phytochemical composition of Pistacia vera shells has never been reported before. Furthermore, the abundant presence of alkyl phenols, namely anacardic acids (AAs), in both P. vera and J. regia shells was herein uncovered for the first time, highlight…
abstract: Agricultural and food industries generate substantial waste that, remaining underexploited, entails environmental, economic, and social issues. The shells of Pistacia vera, Prunus dulcis, Corylus avellana, and Juglans regia species represent the most abundant by-products and have the potential to be further processed into value-added nutraceutical ingredients and other innovative materials. In this thesis, dry fruit shells have been employed as sources of valuable bioactive compounds. Specifically, the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) coupled with Box-Behnken design (BBD) models were adopted to optimize entirely eco-sustainable microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) protocols. The optimized shell extracts exhibited the highest total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant/antiradical activity. Furthermore, in this thesis, MAE method was applied for the first time to recover antioxidants from pistachio and hazelnut shells. Although MAE was previously employed to extract bioactive compounds from almond and walnut shells, the herein optimized MAE conditions led to higher phenolics recovery rates. Moreover, MAE protocols were carefully designed to support their application at an industrial level, where the extraction of natural products using microwave irradiation is already a reality. The phytochemical composition of the optimized shell extracts was determined by hyphenated techniques, namely high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization ion-trap tandem mass spectrometric (HPLC/ESI-MS/MS) analyses. A thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis of mass spectrometric data allowed the identification of phenolic compounds and lipids as the predominant organic constituents in all the extracts. Remarkably, the phytochemical composition of Pistacia vera shells has never been reported before. Furthermore, the abundant presence of alkyl phenols, namely anacardic acids (AAs), in both P. vera and J. regia shells was herein uncovered for the first time, highlight…
author: Maccarronello, Anna Elisabetta
language: eng
keywords: Settore CHIM/06 - Chimica Organica, Settore CHEM-05/A - Chimica organica
date published: 2025-02-27
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:35:15Z
provider: Università degli Studi di Catania
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Università degli studi di Catania

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11769/680849