The production of worldwide nixtamalized products has increased in Latin American countries over the last years. For a better maize handling and exploitation of its nutritional elements, maize is subjected to a nixtamalization pretreatment protocol, which produces meaningful chemical, nutritional and quality changes in maize and its derived products, but large amounts of its primary by-product, well-known as 'nejayote', are also produced. Importantly, nejayote is usually discarded into the urbanized sewage with minimal treatment. Today, according to the recent research reports, new emerging techniques and protocols have been implemented to improve the nixtamalization products and by-products processing. New valorization approaches and biotechnological developments (including biotransformations) toward the reuse of nejayote have been developed according to its considerable content of biomolecules. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the main development works at assisting nixtamalization products and by-products processing. Herein, particular attention is paid to experimental insights dealing with the valorization of nejayote.
Keywords: Nixtamalization; emerging techniques; nejayote; nixtamalized products; waste valorization.