Summary:

The Canadian fruit and vegetable processing sector generates large, repetitive and predictable volumes of unavoidable waste such as peels, cores and pomace. Currently, much of this waste is sent to animal feed, used for biofuel, spread on fields or landfilled. Due to the high water content, low energy density, and high fibre content of this material, fruit and vegetable waste is problematic in many of these waste handling scenarios and can lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions. Retaining these waste streams in the human food chain by converting to value-added products would result in significant environmental and economic benefits.

The proposed project brings together a research and development consortium comprised of industry organizations from different parts of the value chain to address food waste in the fruit and vegetable processing sector. The project will focus on developing the evidence-base to create new value-added products from fruits and vegetables that are processed in large volumes in Canada (e.g. apples, corn, onion, carrots).

Project partners will work synchronously to address knowledge gaps and tackle obstacles to create new fruit or vegetable waste valorization value chains including: preparing waste streams for sale into the human food supply chain, undertaking analyses and trials to determine constraints to new product development, process development and evaluating the sensory and functional performance of the resulting products in trial food formulations.