Identification and Valorization of Agri-Food By-Products: An Overview

Grapes are the raw material for the production of wine, grape juice, aromatic oils and other categories of derived products. Wine is an alcoholic beverage obtained from the partial or complete fermentation of must derived from fresh grapes. Beside basic products - must and wine - significant quantities of other products, known as by-products are resulting from the treatment of grapes and from the conditioning of wines. Grape pomace is the main by-product of wine technology, widely seen as a serious environmental problem due to its disposal or as an undervalued product. However, despite these problems pomace presents a series of important properties. In this framework, the main objective of the present paper is to discuss about the potential of winery wastes and by-products valorisation, especially grape pomace.