ABSTRACT

Agriculture is back bone of Indian economy with year -round crop cultivation and generates large amount of agro-waste. Utilization of agricultural waste is considered to be the important step in environmental protection, energy structure and agricultural development. Recycling of agro waste into value added products is an effective alternative of managing wastes. Agricultural waste arelignocellulosic materials and requires some pretreatments for their modification and conversion into value added products. Alkali pretreatment is found to be most efficient treatments in comparison with other pretreatments and modification methods. Alkali pretreatment leads to alter surface morphology of lignocellulosic agro waste. Most of the lignin content from fibrous agro waste is removed during the treatment. Separated lignin can be recycled and further used for bioethanol generation. The fibrous material derived from agro waste undergo enormous change after alkali treatment. It has good mechanical properties;therefore, it can be molded into lightweight bio composites. Alteration in surface properties such as porosity, surface area and functional groups after treatment brings about material to be a good adsorbent for verities of dyes and heavy metals from waste water. Alkaline pretreatment opens a new era for development of sustainable recycling of fibrous agricultural waste into value added products

Key words: Value added products, Agriculture, Agro-waste,  recycling