The need for pulp and paper has risen significantly due to exponential population growth, industrialization, and urbanization. Most paper manufacturing industries use wood fibers to meet pulp and paper requirements. The shortage of fibrous wood resources and increased deforestation are linked to the excessive dependence on wood for pulp and paper production. Therefore, non-wood substitutes, including corn stalks, sugarcane bagasse, wheat, and rice straw, cotton stalks, and others, may greatly alleviate the shortage of raw materials used to make pulp and paper. Non-woody raw materials can be pulped easily using soda/soda-AQ (anthraquinone), organosolv, and bio-pulping. The use of agricultural residues can also play a pivotal role in the development of polymeric membranes separating different molecular weight cut-off molecules from a variety of feedstocks in industries. These membranes range in applications from water purification to medicinal uses. Considering that some farmers still burn agricultural residues on the fields, resulting in significant air pollution and health issues, the use of agricultural residues in paper manufacturing can eventually help these producers to get better financial outcomes from the grown crop. This paper reviews the current trends in the technological pitch of pulp and paper production from agricultural residues using different pulping methods, with an insight into the application of membranes developed from lignocellulosic materials.

“Let food be the medicine” (Hippocrates) is a historic quote that became the basis of food science and nutraceuticals. Due to their possible therapeutic advantages, extracts from food have attracted much interest in the medical community. These extracts are abundant in bioactive compounds, which are natural molecules that may be found in various foods and have been demonstrated to affect health positively. Food components have lots of bioactive components, including primary and secondary metabolites and nutritional components, for example, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, antioxidants, phenolics, and flavonoids. This study’s primary focus is on the make-up and purpose of these bioactive components found in food extracts. This review aims to give readers a thorough grasp of the bioactive substances found in food extracts and their possible physiological uses. These bioactive substances’ functional traits, such as their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anticancer, and neuroprotective actions, are also studied. Further research is required to create new functional foods, nutraceuticals, and dietary supplements with specific health advantages that can benefit from understanding these molecules’ structure and function.

Nanotechnology is evolving as a significant discipline of research with various applications. It includes the materials and their applications having one dimension in the range of 1–100 nm. Many chemical and physical protocol have been utilized for the nanoparticles (NPs) fabrication. These protocols are costly, hazardous and consumes high energy. Thus, researchers are inclined towards biological synthesis of NPs using plant and or herbal extract as these methods are simple, sustainable, ecofriendly and cost-effective. Flower is an important part of plants, and contained several phytochemicals such as flavonoids, terpenoids, coumarins, sterol and xanthones which acts as an important precursor for NPs synthesis. These compounds acted as reducing as well as stablishing agent during fabrication processes. They have been thoroughly characterized by various techniques. The fabricated NPs have shown potential antimicrobial activity against bacterial and fungal infections. They have been also used as potential therapeutic agent for human breast cancer, gastric adenocarcinoma cell, colorectal adenocarcinoma cell and pancreas ductal adenocarcinoma cells. Overall, the aim of this review article to facilitates the recent understanding of flower-mediated NPs fabrication (a sustainable and ecofriendly resource), their application in different disciplines and challenges.

Lignocellulosic biomass (LB) is the renewable feedstock for the production of fuel/energy, feed/food, chemicals, and materials. LB could also be the versatile source of the functional oligosaccharides, which are non-digestible food ingredients having numerous applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical industries, and others. The burgeoning functional food demand is expected to be more than US$440 billion in 2022. Because of higher stability at low pH and high temperature, oligosaccharides stimulate the growth of prebiotic bifidobacteria and lactic acid bacteria. Xylooligosaccharides (XOS) are major constituents of oligosaccharides consisting of 2–7 xylose monomeric units linked via β-(1,4)-linkages. XOS can be obtained from various agro-residues by thermochemical pretreatment, enzymatic or chemoenzymatic methods. While thermochemical methods are fast, reproducible, enzymatic methods are substrate specific, costly, and produce minimum side products. Enzymatic methods are preferred for the production of food grade and pharmaceutically important oligosaccharides. XOS are potent prebiotics having antioxidant properties and enhance the bio-adsorption of calcium and improving bowel functions, etc. LB can cater to the increasing demand of oligosaccharides because of their foreseeable amount and the advancements in technology to recover oligosaccharides. This paper summarizes the methods for oligosaccharides production from LB, classification, and benefits of oligosaccharides on human health.