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Abstract

Agriculture has been the main industrial sector for various countries in the world. It provides millions of jobs to the population as well as being the main source of income for these countries. Nevertheless, with the increasing demand for agricultural produce, huge amount of agricultural waste are also produced. Using different physical, chemical, or biological approaches, these agricultural wastes, also loosely termed as biomass, present a huge potential to be valorized into various products such as biochemicals, biofuels, and biomaterials, mainly due to its high carbon composition. However, without proper management, these wastes (both liquid and solid) posed serious threat to overall environmental quality notably from its slow degradation process. Current approaches are effective but labor-intensive would normally require huge capital investment and generation of potential hazardous by-products. This prompted the need to have an alternative approach which is cheaper and easier to handle and has minimum potential impact to environmental quality.

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Correspondence to Fatimatul Zaharah Abas .

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Abas, F.Z., Zulkifli, S.E., Sulong, R.S.R., Zakaria, Z.A. (2018). Introduction. In: Zakaria, Z. (eds) Sustainable Technologies for the Management of Agricultural Wastes. Applied Environmental Science and Engineering for a Sustainable Future. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5062-6_1

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