Technological advances for improving fungal cellulase production from fruit wastes for bioenergy application: A review

Highlights: • Comprehensive review on fungal cellulase enzyme production using fruit wastes. • Possible approaches for industrial production of cellulase at low-cost. • Focus on the economical production of biofuels and waste management. • Sustainable approach to improve bioenergy production & solve environmental issues. • Challenges in cellulase production using fruit waste has been emphasized. Fruit wastes can be imperative to elevate economical biomass to biofuels production process at pilot scale. Because of the renewable features, huge availability, having low lignin content organic nature and low cost; these wastes can be of much interest for cellulase enzyme production. This review provides recent advances on the fungal cellulase production using fruit wastes as a potential substrate. Also, the availability of fruit wastes, generation and processing data and their potential applications for cellulase enzyme production have been discussed. Several aspects, including cellulase and its function, solid-state fermentation, process parameters, microbial source, and the application of enzyme in biofuels industries have also been discussed. Further, emphasis has been made on various bottlenecks and feasible approaches such as use of nanomaterials, co-culture, molecular techniques, genetic engineering, and cost economy analysis to develop a low-cost based comprehensive technology for viable production of cellulase and its application in biofuels production technology.