ABSTRACT
The term “seafood” is commonly used to describe a group of biologically diverse edible animals (without mammals), consisting of fish (finfish) and shellfish, whether of fresh water, estuarine, or marine habitats (FAO 2013; Venugopal 2006). Further, the word “seafood” is applied to edible animals both harvested from aquatic sources by fishing and produced by farming. Aquatic animals, such as frogs and turtles, that are served as food and eaten by humans are also considered to be seafood (FAO 2013). Edible seaweeds are also seafood and are widely eaten as sea vegetables all over the world, particularly in Asian countries (FAO 2013). In most countries, the bulk quantity of seafood harvested is sold fresh for local consumption. However, a major portion of seafood harvested is processed in some way or another throughout the world, owing to its extremely perishable nature or export potential or to produce a range of products (processed and ready to eat) with different textures and flavors. In general, commercial seafood processing recovers only 20% to 50% as edible portions, and the remaining parts (50%–80%) are discarded as “nonedible” by-products (Guerard 2007; Suresh and Prabhu 2012). Normally, these by-products are rich sources of different valuable components, such as protein, oils and lipids, bioactive peptides, pigments, flavors, chitin, collagen, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc., useful for various applications in many fields (Suresh and Prabhu 2012).
