Uzbek scientists developed a new technology of the utilization of waste of fruit and vegetable processing in food industry.

Till this moment food producers have had no technologies able to effectively utilize wastes of processing. The content of essential substances in rind, seeds and mill cake was considered to be too small to use it in food industry. That’s why they are used as forage on cattle and poultry farms; bio-fuel or fertilizers are produced on the basis of these products; sometimes they are just thrown out.

The volumes of wasted biomass amount to million tons in a global scale. Possibly, in the nearest future this quantity will reduce thanks to know-how developed by a group of specialists of Namanganskiy Engineering-Pedagogical Institute (Uzbekistan) under management of Shukhrat Atakhanov. At least, this is the opinion of innovators, who have recently won one of the main awards of the first Uzbek contest "Innovative business solutions".

According to estimations done by the specialists, the share of essential substances (vitamins, micro-elements, pectins, hydrocarbons and others) amounts to 62-65% in the waste of fruit and vegetable production.

This is the main idea of the know-how suggested by the specialists: after the production of primary juice, fruit waste is pressed, purified, and soaked in a special solution. The mass is dried and finally crushed in a mill. We get a food powder which can be used in food-concentrate and cannery industries. In addition to juice, including pulpy juice, the powder may serve as the basis for marmalade, fruit paste and various jams. Also it can be used as a component of the formulation of bread, confectionary products, candy paste. To the creators’ opinion, the powders-semi products are characterized by high nutritive and biological value - they are highly competitive with the powders produced on the basis of fresh raw materials.

Innovators are sure in the economic attractiveness of their technology, because their developments let us solve at once three problems: we can get cheap and quality semi-ready product, eliminate the problem of secondary raw materials utilization (so that the producers do not bear expenses for transportation and recycling), and have food industry plants working in off-season period.

The buyer can purchase such equipment for around US$75,000. Raw materials are also inexpensive. For example, in 2006 juice plants sold 1 kg of fruit waste for US$0.047. I.e., the processor can purchase 1 tonne for US$ 4.07 according to the current exchange rate. According to Mr. Atakhanov, this volume may be processed into in average 200 kg of ready food powder.