Towards a comprehensive exploitation of citrus

•Exploitation of residues from citrus fruits had not received enough attention so far.•Critical discussion on methods for extraction–analysis of valuable citrus byproducts is here presented.•The interest of food and nutraceutical industries in compounds from citrus byproducts is emphasized.

The first aim of this review is to show the present state of exploitation of residues from the citrus industries by: (i) discussing the way in which sampling and sample conditioning have been carried out, showing their deficiencies and giving solutions to them; (ii) commenting the designs for optimization of the steps of the analytical process and proposing new designs; (iii) showing the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods for extraction of high- and low-priced compounds from citrus and potential degradation they can undergo; (iv) emphasizing the shortcomings of conventional analytical equipment for identification and quantitation of the target compounds and proposing both cutting-edge analytical equipment and the way the provided data should be processed. To open a door to comprehensive exploitation of citrus residues is the final aim of this review.