Solid-State Fermentation from Organic Wastes: A New Generation of Bioproducts

Solid-state fermentation (SSF) is part of the pathway to consolidate waste as a relevant alternative for the valorization of organic waste. The objective of SSF is to produce one or several bioproducts of added value from solid substrates. Solid-state fermentation can use a wide variety of organic waste as substrates thus, it is an excellent candidate in the framework of the circular bioeconomy to change the status of waste from feedstock. The development of SSF was boosted in the previous decade by scientific efforts devoted to the production of hydrolytic enzymes. Nowadays, SSF has expanded to other valuable products: biosurfactants, biopesticides, aromas, pigments, and bio-flocculants, among others. This review explores the conditions to obtain the main emerging SSF products and highlight and discuss the challenges related to the scale-up of these processes and the bioproducts downstream, which hamper their further commercialization.

Automated summary

Solid-state fermentation is an important approach for producing value-added bioproducts from organic waste. It has the potential to use a wide variety of organic waste and plays a significant role in the circular bioeconomy. In addition to hydrolytic enzymes, solid-state fermentation has been extended to produce valuable products such as biosurfactants and biopesticides. However, challenges in scale-up and commercialization still exist.