Abstract
At the end of the annual horticultural production cycle of greenhouse-grown crops, large quantities of residual biomass are discarded. Here, we propose a new value chain to utilize horticultural leaf biomass for the extraction of secondary metabolites. To increase the secondary metabolite content of leaves, greenhouse-grown crop plants were exposed to low-cost abiotic stress treatments after the last fruit harvest. As proof of concept, we evaluated the production of the flavonoid rutin in tomato plants subjected to nitrogen deficiency. In an interdisciplinary approach, we observed the steady accumulation of rutin in young plants under nitrogen deficiency, tested the applicability of nitrogen deficiency in a commercial-like greenhouse, developed a high efficiency extraction for rutin, and evaluated the acceptance of the proposed value chain by its key actors economically. On the basis of the positive interdisciplinary evaluation, we identified opportunities and challenges for the successful establishment of horticultural leaf biomass as a novel source for secondary metabolites.
Highlights
As the world’s demand on food, feed, and fuel is increasing, novel approaches are needed to enhance the resource efficiency of food production systems.[1]
The key idea of the proposed value chain is to enhance the value of the residual horticultural biomass by an inexpensive stress treatment that induces the accumulation of secondary metabolites
As a proof of concept, we selected the extraction of rutin from tomato biomass, due to its known plasticity in response to nitrogen deficiency.[18,20,35]
Summary
As the world’s demand on food, feed, and fuel is increasing, novel approaches are needed to enhance the resource efficiency of food production systems.[1] Bioeconomic approaches aim to develop novel processes that exploit currently underutilized by-products of agricultural and horticultural food production.[2] In the case of tomato, the most widely grown vegetable in Europe and the U.S, about 33 kg of leaf and stem biomass per 100 kg of harvested tomatoes accrue during and at the end of the growing period.[3] stem biomass contributes to about 70% of the residual green biomass after the last fruit harvest, each tomato plant yields about 0.75 kg of leaf biomass, resulting in about 15 t ha−1 (Mauricio Hunsche, personal communication). Many agricultural, horticultural, and food processing by-products have been investigated as sources for valuable secondary metabolites.[12−14]
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