Pectooligosaccharides as Emerging Functional Ingredients: Sources, Extraction Technologies, and Biological Activities

Abstract In the last decades, the interest in new food products with improved functional properties that promote health benefits is growing. Agri-food by-products constitute an excellent bio-resource to obtain new prebiotics and functional oligosaccharides. Particularly, pectin-rich agricultural by-products are potential cost-effective sources of functional pectooligosaccharides (POS) that have been outlined in recent years as emerging prebiotics with numerous health-promoting effects. An important aspect that influences the functionalities of the POS is the extraction methods. In this sense, a variety of alternative methods have been described to obtain POS using different sources including conventional and emerging intensification technologies. Several biological activities of POS such as prebiotic, antidiabetic, anticholesterolemic, antiobesity, antitumor, antioxidant, antiinflamatory, and antimicrobial, among other, have been described. Therefore, POS could be excellent candidates to formulate functional food by the nutraceutical industry. This chapter collects the aforementioned aspects to give an overview of the potential of POS as functional compounds obtained from renewable resources.