Production of Bioactive peptides from Atlantic Salmon processing discard

Traditionally, fish processing generates several by-products including: viscera, heads, cut-offs, bones / frame, skin, and fins which can account to 75% of the total body weight of the fish. These by-products have traditionally been used to produce low-value products such as fertilizer, silage, and fish meal. However, their potential to produce various high value nutraceuticals and other industrial products including high value protein, omega-3 enriched fish oil, biodiesel, collagen, gelatin, bioactive peptides, enzymes, glycosaminoglycans, hydroxyapatite and minerals has not been fully explored. The emphasis of the proposed work is to produce bioactive peptides, one of the most attractive nutraceutical products, from salmon waste resources. Bioactive peptide is a generic term given to a small fragment of peptides that contain 2-20 amino acids in their structure. The peptides extracted have different chain length and sequence with nutraceutical and pharmaceutical properties. These activities include antioxidant, anticancer, and antihypertensive effects. Recently, several studies have demonstrated the production of bioactive peptides from various food and marine sources with strong specificity, tumor penetrating ability, low toxicity profiles and small size. In addition, due to the amount of the waste generated in the fisheries all over the world, production of bioactive peptides from marine sources has become a feasible option. The rationale behind this proposed research work is to investigate and apply environmentally sustainable methods to utilize salmon waste resources to produce bioactive peptides, incorporate simple and robust technologies such as ultrasound and high pressure processing to produce high and better quality peptides and demonstrate the value of bioactive peptides compared to the traditional low end products.