Valorization of dairy wastes into wonder products by the novel use of microbial cell factories

Background: The dairy processing sector generates a substantial amount of waste loaded with organic content, and dumping these products directly into the environment poses significant serious environmental and health risks.Scope and approach: Despite of the pollution-causing attributes of dairy wastes and its by-products, these are reservoirs of nutrients particularly lactose, proteins, and lipids that encourage microbial growth and valorize these wastes into valuable products.Key findings and conclusions: In the recent era, bioconversion of dairy wastes/effluents viz., expired milk, whey, and residual whey permeate into different value-added products with the help of microorganisms is an indispensable resolution to this problem. As a result, this review emphasizes the potential of microorganisms in converting dairy wastes into exceptional and diverse value-added products. Recent developments in valorization technologies of dairy effluents and other by-products using different microbial cell factories are well summarized. Different technologies involving aerobic and anaerobic processing of dairy waste utilizing various strains of microflora are now emerging as viable and environmentally sustainable ways of producing biofuels, biopolymers, single-cell protein, and other biobased products.