Natural products: an extraordinary source of value-added compounds from diverse biomasses in Brazil

The biodiversity of Brazil contains an extraordinary number of compounds from natural products with a wide and complex variety of molecular structures, therefore representing an economic potential in biomasses to be explored. Plant systems are the principal source of medicine and directly contribute to the development of new drugs in addition to agrochemicals, cosmetics, fine chemicals and nutraceuticals. Besides plants, other biomasses can be used as raw material, including marine organisms and microorganisms such as extremophilic and endophytic microbes. Interest in natural products for diverse uses is attributed to their different bioactivities, low toxicity and environmental sustainability. Based on these attributes, other non-biological applications of natural products from biomasses have been reported for use in textiles, antifouling coating in marine transportation, wood adhesives, industrial polymers and biofuel. After extractions of natural products of pharmaceutical interest or industrial application, such as polymers, or even of metabolites for biofuels, the residues (e.g., fibers) or other compounds (e.g., nutrients) are discarded generating unnecessary environmental pollution, but they could be used for the production of different value-added products. Some examples of residues that are being explored for added value by extracting other natural metabolites are olive and apple pomace, macauba and carnauba cakes, and cashew nut shell liquid. Residues and by-products derived from different biomasses in Brazil are a potential source of compounds of biological and industrial interest and therefore must be investigated in order to add value to the entire supply chain of natural product. Graphical abstract ᅟ