Organizing co mmittee

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
This research was financially supported by the National Key Research & Development 
Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFE0205600), Youth Innovation Promotion 
Association CAS, Grant No. 2021435, and the Central Asian Drug Discovery and 
Development Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

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Plenary presentation 
8 
CONVENTIONAL CROPS BYPRODUCTS AS SUSTAINABLE 
RAW MATERIALS FOR NOVEL PHARMACEUTICAL AND 
NUTRACEUTICAL PRODUCTS 
Nazım Sekeroglu
1,3
* & Sevgi Gezici
2
 
1
Gaziantep University, Faculty of Science and Literature, Department Biology, 27310, 
Gaziantep- Türkiye 
2
Gaziantep University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Biology, 27310, 
Gaziantep- Türkiye 
3
Phytotherapy and Medicinal-Aromatic Plants Application and Research Center 
(GAUN-FITOTABAUM), Gaziantep University, 27310 Gaziantep-Türkiye 
*Corresponding Author: [e-mail] ; [e-mail] 
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs) are of important raw materials for the 
production of novel pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products. Besides these special 
plants, byproducts which are residues of conventional crops are important raw materials 
in natural products production. These sustainable byproducts; the seeds (grape, 
pomegranate, fig, pepper, tomato), kernels (olive, date, cherry, melon, sweet melon), 
fruit stalks (cherry), fruit peels (pomegranate, citrus, apple) and other parts of the 
conventional crops. These sustainable organic ingredients are byproducts of the 
conventional crops and have been used in traditional food recipes and folk medicine for 
centuries. Therefore, new natural products can be produced from these residues that 
offer environmental, social and economic advantages thanks to their reuse. Recently, 
scientific studies have rediscovered these materials with their rich phytochemical 
constituents. The seeds and kernels covering the seeds contain fatty oils rich in 
unsaturated fatty oils, which are rare ones. In this context, nervonic acid, a unique fatty 
acid, in the olive kernels was firstly reported by Sekeroglu and Gezici. Besides fatty 
oils, these plant residues may also contain other phytochemicals like essential oils, 
alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, flavonoids. While the grape seeds with distinguished 
phytochemical constituents have been widely used for pharmaceutical and 
nutraceuticals products, pomegranate seed fatty oil with punicic acid (also called 
trichosanic acid) content have also recently been started to use in cosmeceuticals, 
recently. Moreover, fig seed fatty oil, a new source of omega-3 and gamma tocopherol, 
have been rediscovered recently and started to be used in cosmetic and pharmaceutical 
industries. Besides its fatty oils, whole seeds and kernels have been included in 
traditional food mixtures and traditional herbal coffees throughout long human history. 
Melon and water melon seeds have been used for the breakfast za’atar in the southern