New Advances in the integrated Management of food processing wAste in India and Europe: use of Sustainable Technologies for the Exploitation of by-products into new foods and feeds

Namaste is a collaborative small or medium-scale focused research project under the coordinated call for proposals between European Commission and Department of Biotechnology, India. The project Namaste EU has started on 1 February 2010 and parallely in Namaste India has started on 26 March 2010 and has a duration of 3 years. Namaste project aims at developing eco-efficient processes leading to the valorization of by-products on the basis of a strategy dealing with the formulation and characterization of new foods (fiber-based foods and functional beverage) and a feed for fish. NAMASTE key scientific research will focus on the exploitation of by-products of fruits and cereals processing industry as they, both in India and in Europe, are (a) extensively produced and only partially valorized and at low value-added levels (b) available at very low costs as mostly classified and managed as byproducts of environmental concern (due to their liability to putrefy and become a nuisance or health hazard), (c) suitable matrices, given their high intrinsic contents of effective antioxidants, antimicrobial agents, vitamins along with polysaccharides and proteins amenable of microbial transformation towards healthy oligosaccharides and oligopeptides, for generating new foods and feeds with improved nutritional properties. The new foods and feeds to be formulated in the project have been selected on the basis of current and future Indian-European markets needs and opportunities and the results of careful analysis performed by the two consortia on the feasible and most promising ways to efficiently exploit the nutritional and biochemical features of by products adopted in the project.