From Latin American Agro-Industrial Waste and CO2 to High-Value Bioproducts: Fermentation-Based Production Platforms for a Regional Bioeconomy

This focused review examines fermentation and fermentation-integrated microbial platforms that convert two regionally relevant substrate classes, Latin American agro-industrial residues and concentrated CO2 streams, into high-value bioproducts. The review is not intended as a complete survey of all biomass valorization routes in Latin America. Instead, it evaluates platform–feedstock–product combinations with clear translational relevance for regional biorefineries, with emphasis on literature from 2020–2025 and on earlier benchmark studies only when they define current technical performance limits. Latin America and the Caribbean combine high-volume sugarcane, agave, coffee, citrus, banana, cacao, and tuber-processing residues with biogenic CO2 from ethanol fermentation and industrial point sources from cement, lime, and oil-and-gas operations. The technical opportunity is therefore not residue abundance alone, but the rational coupling of residue chemistry, CO2-source quality, locally isolated microbial strains, and process architectures that can be scaled under regional constraints. We compare phototrophic CO2-fixing modules based on cyanobacteria and microalgae, chemoautotrophic gas fermentation using Cupriavidus necator and related systems, heterotrophic yeast platforms including Rhodotorula spp. and Yarrowia lipolytica, and bacterial platforms for PHAs, bacterial cellulose, and organic acids. The core technical analysis focuses on substrate conditioning, hydrolysate inhibition, oxygen- and gas-transfer constraints, light delivery, C/N control, mixed-sugar utilization, metabolic engineering, reactor configuration, downstream processing, and quantitative reporting metrics. One fermentation-integrated laboratory case study—the Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803–Rhodotorula mucilaginosa UANL-001L CO2-to-carotenoid relay—and one explicitly defined non-fermentative boundary case on peel-extract-derived coating films are used to illustrate two different aspects of regional biorefinery design: dual-feedstock microbial conversion and low-CapEx product-fit decisions for agro-industrial residues. We conclude that Latin America’s strongest near-term position is in technically disciplined, product-specific biorefineries that integrate local feedstock chemistry with engineered or locally adapted chassis, rather than in generic biomass-to-product claims.