Scholarly record

ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF CITRUS PEEL AND SEEDS EXTRACTS

Cristina Damian

Abstract

The production of food waste covers all the food life cycle: from agriculture, up to industrial manufacturing and processing, retail and household consumption. Increasingly, industrial ecology concepts such as cradle to cradle and circular economy are considered leading principle for eco-innovation, aiming at ?zero waste economy? in which waste is used as raw material for new products and applications. The large amount of waste produced by the food industry, in addition to being a great loss of valuable materials, also raises serious management problems, both from the economic and environmental point of view. Environmental legislation has significantly contributed to the introduction of sustainable waste management practices throughout the European Union. Considering the challenges in the area of food industry, efforts are to be made to optimize processing technologies to minimize the amount of waste. A possible way to valorize citrus peels and seeds, which are byproducts of the juice extraction industry, is to use them as natural antioxidants. The antioxidant activity of several citrus peel and seed extracts was tested. Generally, seeds possessed greater antioxidant activity than peels. No clear relationship could be shown between the antioxidant activity and the phenolic composition of the extracts.

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