Production of Natural Pectin from Locally Available Fruit Waste and Its Applications as Commercially Value-added Product in Pharmaceuticals, Cosmetics and Food Processing Industries

The raise in production of fruit products, such as marmalade, low-caloric foods, juice, frozen foods, jellies and jams, has led to the generation of large volume of fruit wastes as a by-product. These agro-industrial wastes cause serious environmental pollution, and hence, there is an urgent need for their recycling and appropriate utilization via extraction and production of biologically and chemically functional ingredients (i.e. pectin). This review work demonstrates the importance of pectin molecule, its chemical compositions and general biochemical properties, its gelation techniques or mechanisms and its applications as functional and value-added ingredients in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food processing industries. Normally, pectin exists in the cell wall of plant cell or fruit cell possessing biopolymer or polysaccharide structures. This by-product has received increasing recognition in modern processing industries and can also be obtained from fruit wastes preponderantly through extraction process. Several factors, such as Degree of esterification, Molecular size, Temperature, Presence of other solutes (i.e. sugar), Charge density on the molecule, and pH values strongly affect the nature of gel formation entire the pectin molecule. Therefore, suitable and effective extraction mechanisms have to be employed to produce this valuable product (i.e. pectin) from locally available fruit wastes.