Cocoa: Beyond chocolate, a promising material for potential value-added products

Cocoa is one of the most important agricultural products globally, with its production mostly concentrated in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Brazil. Chocolate is the main commercial product obtained from cocoa, and European countries are the main exporters of chocolate products. In addition, due to the valuable nutrients and bioactive compounds from cocoa, this commodity has also served as a raw material for the development of innovative cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications. However, despite the great economic importance of cocoa exploitation, the amount of waste and by-products that are generated is incompatible with sustainable development. Therefore the cocoa industry represents a challenge for the improvement of technologies focused on the recovery of different residues, particularly for the extraction of bioactive compounds for different purposes. Likewise, environmental applications involving waste transformation, such as saccharification of biomass to obtain biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) and waste conditioning for removing contaminants through adsorption processes, portray a formidable task. Additional applications, for instance animal feed, require waste detoxification. This chapter compiles various possibilities developed for providing and marketing value-added goods from cocoa and its by-products. On that note, the first sections of this chapter are focused on the cocoa pod structure, its processing, and chemical composition, which are significant for all current and future applications using cocoa waste. These are outlined in subsequent sections covering food manufacturing, agricultural activities, animal farming, and diverse environmental approaches, which are mainly focused on the sustainable production of cocoa products through the utilization of their residues, linked to a reduction in its environmental impact.