251 A Waste-to-Wealth Prospective Through Biotechnological Advancements 12 Kongkona Saikia, Abiram Karanam Rathankumar, Jorge Luis Folch-Mallol, and Vaidyanathan Vinoth Kumar 12.1 Introduction Agricultural wastes are end-products or by-products of the production of agricultural commodities and the indecorous management of these wastes may contribute to various environmental hazards. Usually, the agro-wastes are discharged into the environment without any proper treatment or are burnt off, which leads to municipal landfilling and environmental load along with potential contamination and transmis- sion of hazardous materials to the environment (Chia et al. 2018). Also, the inciner- ation of such wastes produces greenhouse gases that are dangerous to the environment and human health (Bosio et al. 2013). Amounting to 350 million tonnes annually, India produces agricultural wastes whose appropriate handling is still in its primary stage (Saikia et al. 2020a, b). The majority of these leftovers are utilized as wood fuels, and also they might serve as the raw materials for a variety of commer- cial goods. The valorization of waste materials including agro-wastes is an appealing economic approach, due to the existence of cellulose backbone (Ren et al. 2009; Saikia et al. 2020c; Rathankumar et al. 2020a). Yet, the current research gap around essential scientific investigations makes large-scale management becomes difficult. The absence of appropriate treatment and downstream technologies and the viability of different integrated waste treatment procedures serve as typical examples of this gap. Moreover, the improper classification of the agro-wastes poses another obstacle K. Saikia · A. K. Rathankumar · V. V. Kumar (✉) Department of Biotechnology, Integrated Bioprocessing Laboratory, School of Bioengineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India e-mail: vinothkv@srmist.edu.in J. L. Folch-Mallol Laboratorio Fisiología Molecular Microorganismos Extremófilos, Centro de Investigaciones en Dinámica Celular. Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Cuernavaca, Mexico # The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 B. Samuel Jacob et al. (eds.), Applied Biotechnology for Emerging Pollutants Remediation and Energy Conversion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1179-0_12