Efficient use of discarded vegetal residues as cost-effective feedstocks for microbial oil production

BACKGROUND: Horticultural intensive type systems dedicated in producing greenhouse vegetables are one of the primary industries generating organic waste. Towards the implementation of a zero-waste strategy, this work aims to use discarded vegetables (tomato, pepper and watermelon) as feedstock for producing microbial oil using the oleaginous yeast Cryptococcus curvatus. RESULTS: The soluble fraction, resulting after crushing and centrifuging these residues, showed C/N ratios of about 15, with a total carbohydrate content (mainly glucose, fructose and sucrose) ranging from 30 g/L to 65 g/L. Using these liquid fractions as substrate under a pulse-feeding strategy with a concentrated glucose solution resulted in an intracellular total lipid accumulation of about 30% (w/w) of the total dry cell weight (DCW). To increase this intracellular lipid content, the initial C/N content was increased from 15 to 30 and 50. Under these conditions, the process performance of the pulse-feeding strategy increased by 20–36%, resulting in a total intracellular lipid concentration of 35–40% DCW (w/w). CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate the potential of discarded vegetables as a substrate for producing bio-based products such as microbial oil when proper cultivation strategies are available. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13068-023-02268-5.