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Abstract:
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The date palm Phoenix dactylifera has played an important role in the day-to-day life of
the people for the last 7000 years. Today worldwide production, utilization and industrialization of
dates are continuously increasing since date fruits have earned great importance in human nutrition
owing to their rich content of essential nutrients. Tons of date palm fruit wastes are discarded daily
by the date processing industries leading to environmental problems. Wastes such as date pits
represent an average of 10% of the date fruits. Thus, there is an urgent need to find suitable applications
for this waste. In spite of several studies on date palm cultivation, their utilization and scope
for utilizing date fruit in therapeutic applications, very few reviews are available and they are limited
to the chemistry and pharmacology of the date fruits and phytochemical composition, nutritional
significance and potential health benefits of date fruit consumption. In this context, in the present
review the prospects of valorization of these date fruit processing by-products and wastes’ employing
fermentation and enzyme processing technologies towards total utilization of this valuable
commodity for the production of biofuels, biopolymers, biosurfactants, organic acids, antibiotics,
industrial enzymes and other possible industrial chemicals are discussed |