Utilization of Date By-Products in the Food Industry

The fruit of date palm tree Phoenix dactylifera is among the most abundant fruits, and it is rich in essential nutrients. Quality-wise, not all cultivated date fruits meet the commercial standards, and tons of date fruit that are immature, or of poor appearance but with no reduced nutritive value are treated as date by-product and are being used for animal feed or are discarded during processing by the relevant industries. Together with the rejected fruit, date seed which is the inedible part, and the trimmed fronds of the date palm, they are all discarded, resulting in an environmental problem, and an economical loss. The objective of this review is to identify current practices on the uses of low-grade date, seed, and frond in the industry. The literature shows date fruit of low quality is typically processed to make date paste and date syrup, and both are well utilized in the food sector. The chemical composition of date seed, and increasingly of other parts are well known, and fully exploited in many industrial applications.