Tropical Marine Fish Surimi By-products: Utilisation and Potential as Functional Food Application

Abstract

More than 60% of the world surimi production is derived from tropical fish species and the percentage is increasing due to the rise in demand. Owing to the massive production, the by-products generated from surimi processing could pose a detrimental effect on the terrestrial and aquatic environment. To address this problem, traditionally efforts were made to convert these by-products into animal feeds, silages, fertilisers, and biofuels, which is in most cases, are considered as low value-added products. Since, fish surimi by-products possess valuable and predominant protein contents; hence, effective approaches are needed to exploit the by-products into high-end products such as collagen, gelatine, protein hydrolysate, peptide, enzymes that could be used in functional food, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries. This review focuses on the nutritional composition, value-added processing and biological active properties of by-products from tropical marine fish species processing. In addition, the use of these by-products as high-end products are also highlighted. This paper also discussed on the challenges on the utilisation of tropical fish by-products into high-value products. Utilisation of fish by-products into valuable food commodities would contribute on functional foods development and also on sustainable fish processing industry.