Cold plasma: Unveiling its impact on hydration, rheology, nutritional, and anti-nutritional properties in food materials - An overview.

Non-thermal technologies, primarily employed for microbial inactivation and quality preservation in foods, have seen a surge in interest, with non-thermal plasma garnering particular attention. Cold plasma exhibits promising outcomes, including enhanced germination, improved functional and rheological properties, and microorganism destruction. This has sparked increased exploration across various domains, notably in hydration and rheological properties for creating new products. This review underscores the manifold benefits of applying cold plasma to diverse food materials, such as cereal and millet flours, and gums. Notable improvements encompass enhanced functionality, modified color parameters, altered rheological properties, and reduced anti-nutritional factors. The review delves into mechanisms like starch granule fragmentation, elucidating how these processes enhance the physical and structural properties of food materials. While promising for high-quality food development, overcoming challenges in scaling up production and addressing legal issues is essential for the technology's commercialization.

Hawaijar - An ethnic vegan fermented soybean food of Manipur, India: A comprehensive review.

Hawaijar, ethnic vegan fermented soybean food of Manipur, India is culturally and gastronomically important indigenously produced food. It is alkaline, sticky, mucilaginous and slightly pungent and bears similar properties with many fermented soybean foods of Southeast Asia like natto of Japan, douchi of China, thua nao of Thailand, choongkook jang of Korea. The functional microorganism is Bacillus and has numerous health benefits like fibrinolytic enzyme, antioxidant, antidiabetic, and ACE inhibitory activities. It is also very rich in nutrients but unscrupulous production method and sale lead to food safety issues. Huge potential pathogen population upto the level of 107-10 cfu/g Bacillus cereus and Proteus mirabilis were detected. Recent studies revealed presence of enterotoxic and urease gene in microorganisms originated from hawaijar. Improved and regulated food chain will result in hygienic and safe hawaijar. It has scope for functional food and nutraceutical global market and hold potential to provide employment to enhance the overall socioeconomic status of the region. Scientific production of fermented soybean over the traditional methods is summarized in this paper along with food safety and health benefits. Microbiological aspects on fermented soybean along with nutritive values are critically explained inside the paper.

Utilization of agricultural waste biomass and recycling toward circular bioeconomy.

The major global concern on energy is focused on conventional fossil resources. The burning of fossil fuels is an origin of greenhouse gas emissions resulting in the utmost threat to the environment and subsequently which leads to global climate changes. As far as sustainability is concerned, fuels and materials derived from organic or plant wastes overcome this downside establishing the solution to the fossil resource crisis. In this context, exploration of agricultural residue appears to be a suitable alternative of non-renewable resources to support the environmental feasibility and meet the high energy crisis. The use of agricultural waste as a feedstock for the biorefinery approach emerges to be an eco-friendly process for the production of biofuel and value-added chemicals, intensifying energy security. Therefore, a prospective choice of this renewable biomass for the synthesis of green fuel and other green biochemicals comes up with a favorable outcome in terms of cost-effectiveness and sustainability. Exploiting different agricultural biomass and exploring various biomass conversion techniques, biorefinery generates bioenergy in a strategic way which eventually fits in a circular bioeconomy. Sources and production of agricultural waste are critically explained in this paper, which provides a path for further value addition by various technologies. Biorefinery solutions, along with a life cycle assessment of agricultural waste biomass toward a wide array of value-added products aiding the bioeconomy, are summarized in this paper.