• Energy Research

Urban agriculture is gaining global recognition as a strategic approach to promising creating sustainable and reliable food sources, enhancing food security and resilience in cities. By shortening the food supply chain, urban agriculture reduces the reliance on pesticides and fertilizers, while also conserving water and mitigating land degradation. Despite these benefits, further research and collaborative efforts are needed to integrate the advanced technological practices and improve overall sustainability. Urban agriculture offers exciting opportunities for the horticultural and agricultural sectors, especially when it focuses on maximizing product quality. This approach merges technology, architecture, and farming within vertical structures, highlighting the synergy between urban living and the natural environment. Urban Agriculture is versatile, serving both productive and aesthetic purposes in various forms. To achieve sustainability in urban settings, urban agriculture offers a proactive alternative to traditional agriculture. Its success varies depending on the extent of its implementation at either the building or city level. Urban agriculture can play a critical role in addressing food deserts by increasing access to fresh produce, empowering communities, and reducing transportation costs. Urban agriculture positively impacts the urban landscape by enhancing aesthetics, promoting well-being, and fostering a sense of community engagement, supporting biodiversity, minimizing heat buildup in urban areas and contributing to climate resilience. Overall, urban agriculture represents a promising alternative to conventional agriculture and has the potential to make cities more livable and resilient. Regulatory challenges, social acceptance of waste, high investment costs, and limited recognition of indirect impacts are some of the challenges that come with implementing urban agriculture. The recommendations highlighted the importance of local governance and public policies in promoting circular urban agriculture. Promoting collaboration, fostering innovation, developing regulatory frameworks, and displaying successful urban agriculture practices are all possibilities. This review aims to present an overview of urban agriculture as a strategic pathway to building resilience and ensuring sustainable food security in cities.

Economic and technical problems related to the reduction of petroleum resources require the valorisation of renewable raw material. Recently, microalgae emerged as promising alternative feedstock that represents an enormous biodiversity with multiple benefits exceeding the potential of conventional agricultural feedstock. Thus, this comprehensive review article spots the light on one of the most interesting microalga Chlorella vulgaris. It assembles the history and a thorough description of its ultrastructure and composition according to growth conditions. The harvesting techniques are presented in relation to the novel algo-refinery concept, with their technological advancements and potential applications in the market.

Agriculture and farming have a long history. Agriculture is the main economic structure for many developed and developing countries. The modern agricultural practices affect the environment namely nutrient cycle, soil erosion, carbon sequestration, and many other ecological patterns. Organic farming is influential practice to minimize the environmental and ecological impact of sustainable development. Usage of more organic matters in agricultural practices can reduce the adverse effects on the environment by keep saving its natural cycles on recovery process and organic farming may enhance the food quality too. The organic farming may largely exclude the usage of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, growth hormones and feed additives of livestock activities. A combination of organic farming and new technologies is of utmost importance to reduce the limitations and challenges of organic farming. The innovative methods and new approaches making new trends toward sustainability farming system and enhances the agricultural productivity, and quality of life of many farmers in an environmentally friendly way. In other words, organic farming mirrors the sustainability concepts of Global Agriculture.

A new biorefinery approach has been developed in the present study, and applied on cumin (Cuminum cyminum) seeds as a potential source of phytochemicals of interest. Cumin is a popular spice used widely for its distinctive aroma. It is a rich reserve of both vegetable and essential oils. The biorefinery approach here focused on the evaluation of the influence of four different geographical origins (i.e., Lebanon, France, Algeria and Syria) on oil yield and quality in cumin seed, and on the valorization of remaining by-products by investigating their nutritional content and biological activity for the first time. Vegetable and essential oils were extracted, and their compositions were determined. Nutritional traits were also assessed. The delipidated and hydrodistillated cakes just as aromatic water were characterized for their fiber, sugar, protein, phenol and flavonoid contents. Antibacterial and antioxidant activities were also determined. Cumin seeds showed high contents in both vegetable and essential oils, proteins and sugars regardless their origin. Moreover, this Apiaceae species exhibited high levels of petroselinic fatty acid (an isomer of oleic acid) and sterols. Cakes and aromatic water also presented high levels of proteins, fibers, sugars and phenols. These residues revealed interesting antioxidant and antibacterial activities. These results emphasized the potential use of cumin in a biorefinery concept, with a multi-purpose industrial process. In addition, large differences were observed between the four geographical origins for phytochemical contents and compositions. These findings highlight the perspectives for developing selection programs for nutritional traits and industrial interests. All obtained results validate the health promoting effect of cumin composition as well as its industrial importance along with the residues.

Background: Tomato pomace (TP) is a coproduct generated by the extraction of tomato pulp, and is a potential source of bioactive molecules. In this study, we isolated several fractions from TP and evaluated their biological properties. Materials and Methods: TP was treated by maceration at room temperature with green solvents (ethanol, ethyl acetate, ethanol:water and ethanol:ethyl acetate) or supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2). The extracts were analyzed by HPLC-DAD to determine their composition, and their antioxidant activity was assessed. The potential therapeutic effects of the isolated fractions were assessed in vitro. Results: We identified 30 molecules on chromatography profiles, which revealed an abundance in phenolic acids, carotenoids, flavonoids and tannins, with differences in selectivity according to the solvent and pretreatment used. The highest radical scavenging activities were measured at 64–72% inhibition, corresponding to the ethanol or ethanol:water extracts with the highest polyphenol or flavonoid contents. Carotenoid content was increased by chemical pretreatment, to attain levels of 161 mg β-carotene/g ethyl acetate extract. This level of carotenoids seemed to have anti-inflammatory effects, with an IC50 of 9.3 μg/mL. In terms of anti-diabetic effects, the activities of α-glucosidase and α-amylase were best inhibited by extraction in an ethanol-to-water mixture (50:50). Cytotoxicity in a tumor cell line were highest for SC-CO2 extracts (64.5% inhibition) and for ethanol extracts obtained after the enzymatic pretreatment of TP (37% inhibition). Some extracts also had dose-dependent activity against Zika virus. Conclusions: New fractions obtained from TP with ecocompatible solvents in mild conditions are rich in bioactive molecules. A comparison of the chromatographic profiles of the extracts led to the identification of several key molecules with therapeutic properties. The chemical pretreatment of TP is justified as a mean of increasing the carotenoid content of ethyl acetate fractions, whereas enzymatic pretreatment can increase the antioxidant activity of ethyl acetate fractions and increase the cytotoxicity of ethanol fractions. The SC-CO2 fraction contained a smaller number of metabolites detectable on HPLC, but it had high levels of cytotoxicity and antioxidant activity. Finally, the fractions obtained appeared to be suitable for use to target one or several of the biological activities studied.

Malnutrition continues to be a key health problem in developing regions. The valorization of food waste appears as an ideal way to prevent malnutrition and improve people’s access to food. Cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) and caraway (Carum carvi L.) oilseeds are commonly used for cuisine and medicinal purposes. However, remaining cakes after oil extraction are usually underutilized. In order to assess the usefulness of these by-products in food applications, this study investigated the effect of their addition to protein bread formulations. Different levels (2, 4 and 6%) of whole seeds and cakes flour were used in the study. Fortified protein bread samples were compared to control protein bread and evaluated for their sensory, color, moisture, hardness properties, nutritional values as well as their biological activity. Results indicated that bread fortification shows a significant effect on bread properties depending on fortification level. A higher acceptability was observed specially for bread fortified with by-products flour. Increased tendencies of color darkness, moisture content, bread hardness, nutritional values as well as total phenolic content and radical scavenging activity compared to control bread were observed as the percentage of fortification increased in both cases. The overall results showed that the addition of cumin and caraway seeds and by-product flour can improve the antioxidant potential and overall quality of protein bread.