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Agricultural Waste Valorization is a comprehensive guide to understanding, managing, and valorizing organic residues generated across major tropical cropping systems. The book examines the global crisis of organic waste, the specific challenges faced in tropical agriculture, and the enormous untapped potential of crop residues such as coffee pulp, banana pseudostems, rice husk, sugarcane bagasse, cocoa pod husks, and cassava peels.
It provides a structured, science-based overview of biological, thermochemical, and integrated waste-management pathways—such as composting, anaerobic digestion, gasification, biochar production, and innovative emerging uses like black soldier fly larvae and fiber extraction. Through crop-specific case studies and practical tools, it offers a roadmap for implementing circular, low-waste systems on farms and in rural communities throughout the tropics.
This book is important because it addresses one of the least recognized yet most critical sustainability challenges in tropical agriculture: the continuous and massive generation of organic waste. In regions with year-round production, humid climates, and limited processing infrastructure, organic residues often become environmental liabilities—producing greenhouse gases, contaminating water sources, and wasting valuable nutrients and energy.
By reframing waste as a resource, the book highlights how tropical countries can transform a problem into a development opportunity. It offers practical, context-appropriate strategies to help farmers, researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners turn residues into compost, energy, materials, and new livelihood options. In doing so, it supports climate mitigation, soil restoration, rural income diversification, and the transition toward circular and regenerative agricultural systems.
Dr. Eduardo Duque Dussán is a mechanical and chemical engineer specializing in sustainable technologies for organic waste management and coffee postharvest processes. His work focuses on thermochemical conversion of biomass, biogas systems, and renewable-energy solutions for agricultural waste, along with extensive experience in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. He also works in the development and evaluation of coffee drying technologies, integrating engineering design, heat and mass transfer, and solar-mechanical hybrid systems. At Cenicafé, he serves in the Engineering and Postharvest Department, where he advances machinery, drying innovations, and sustainable waste valorization for tropical agricultural systems.
Dr. Paula Andrea Figueroa Varela is a biologist with expertise in biotechnology, microbial applications, and plant improvement. Although her scientific background centers on molecular biology and CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing for enhancing plant traits, she also works with native microorganisms to improve composting and biological transformation of agricultural residues. She is currently part of Cenicafé’s Plant Breeding Department, where she contributes to research on genetic improvement and postharvest-associated microbial processes. Her work bridges biotechnology, microbial ecology, and sustainable strategies for managing organic waste in tropical agricultural environments.