Fig “Ficus carica L.” and its by-products: A decade evidence of their health-promoting benefits towards the development of novel food formulations

The food industry constantly searches for natural derived bioactive molecules with preventive and therapeutic effects using innovative and sustainable strategies. Fig production and processing generate a considerable amount of by-products (leaves, pulp, peels, seeds, and latex) with limited commercial exploitation and negative impact on the environment. These by-products are important sources of high value-added in- gredients, including anthocyanins and pectins that can be of particular interest to the food industry as functional colourants, emulsifiers, and additives. Scope and approach: This review curates recent advances in the valorisation of fig by-products as valuable sources of bioactive molecules for functional food development. Special attention was given to widely used extraction processes, main bioactive compounds, relevant biological properties, and the application of recovered bioactives for functional food development. Key findings and conclusions: Fig by-products are essential sources of structurally diverse bioactive molecules with unique antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumour, immunomodulatory and cardioprotective properties. Owing to these health-promoting potentials, an integral valorisation approach involving sustainable technologies to recover these high value-added ingredients and its utilisation in novel food formulation development should be further stimulated.Funding for open access charge: Universidade de Vigo/CISUG. Au- thors are grateful to Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES to the CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020). L. Barros, thank the national funding by FCT, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program for her contract. This work is also supported by MICINN supporting the Ramo ́n y Cajal grant for M.A. Prieto (RYC-2017-22891) and Juan de la Cierva Formacio ́nn contract for T. Oludemi (FJC2019-042549-I) and by Xunta de Galicia for supporting the program EXCELENCIA-ED431F 2020/12 and the pre-doctoral grant of M. Carpena (ED481A 2021/ 313). Manuel Ayuso thanks to PRIMA and FEDER-Interreg Espan ̃a- Portugal programme for financial support through the projects Local- NutLeg (Section 1 2020 Agrofood Value Chain topic 1.3.1). This work is also supported by the project SYSTEMIC Knowledge hub on Nutrition and Food Security, which received funding from national research funding entities in Belgium (FWO), France (INRA), Germany (BLE), Italy (MIPAAF), Latvia (IZM), Norway (RCN), Portugal (FCT), and Spain (AEI) in a joint action of JPI HDHL, JPI-OCEANS and FACCE-JPI launched in 2019 under the ERA-NET ERA-HDHL (n◦ 696295). Authors are grateful to Ibero-American Program on Science and Technology (CYTED—AQUA-CIBUS, P317RT0003), to the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 888003 UP4HEALTH Project (H2020-BBI-JTI-2019) The JU receives support from the Euro- pean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and the Bio Based Industries Consortium. This work has also received financial support from Portuguese national funds (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia e Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, FCT/ MCTES) through project UIDB/50006/2020 and AgriFood XXI I&D&I project (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000041) cofinanced by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the NORTE 2020 (Programa Operacional Regional do Norte 2014/2020).