Microbial Valorization of Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Waste into Bacterial Cellulose: Innovations for Circular Bioeconomy Integration

Agricultural and agro-industrial waste, produced in vast quantities worldwide, presents both environmental and economic challenges. Microbial valorization offers a sustainable solution, with bacterial cellulose (BC) emerging as a high-value product due to its purity, strength, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. This review highlights recent advances in producing BC from agricultural and agro-industrial residues via optimized fermentation processes, including static and agitated cultivation, co-cultivation, stepwise nutrient feeding, and genetic engineering. Diverse wastes such as fruit peels, sugarcane bagasse, cereal straws, and corn stover serve as cost-effective carbon sources, reducing production costs and aligning with circular bioeconomy principles. Advances in strain engineering, synthetic biology, and omics-guided optimization have significantly improved BC yield and functionalization, enabling applications in food packaging, biomedicine, cosmetics, and advanced biocomposites. Process innovations, including tailored pretreatments, adaptive evolution, and specialized bioreactor designs, further enhance scalability and product quality. The integration of BC production into circular bioeconomy models not only diverts biomass from landfills but also replaces petroleum-based materials, contributing to environmental protection and resource efficiency. This review underscores BC's potential as a sustainable biomaterial and identifies research directions for overcoming current bottlenecks in industrial-scale implementation.