Xylitol: Production strategies with emphasis on biotechnological approach, scale up, and market trends

Abstract

Xylitol, a sugar alcohol that is mostly derived from natural sources such as birch wood, corn cobs, and various plant materials like berries, oats, and mushrooms shows promising potential for use in various fields in the future like medicine, food, and pharmaceuticals. The current review paper focuses on a biotechnological approach that overcomes the limitations of traditional chemical methods for synthesizing xylitol, a sugar alcohol that is commonly used as a sugar substitute. The new methods can save time by utilizing waste byproducts such as lignocellulosic biomass, which can benefit from integrated management of hemicellulose with a high xylose content for xylitol extraction and its cost-effective structural reformulation into value-added products. Improved xylitol production from both wild and genetically modified strains is discussed in the paper. Increases in both xylitol production and its practical applications can be used to foretell the direction of the market. Suggestions were made for increasing xylitol output by altering both the substrate and the processing conditions. Out of the various approaches described in the article, the microbial/biotechnological method was found to be promising for future upscaling in the production of xylitol, which is then followed by fermentation and downstream processing. The future applications of xylitol in relation to market trends are also discussed further.