Retraction notice to “Resource recovery and biorefinery potential of apple orchard waste in the circular bioeconomy” [Bioresour. Technol. 321 (2021) 124496] (Bioresource Technology (2021) 321, (S0960852420317703), (10.1016/j.biortech.2020.124496))

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of Elsevier's Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team and an independent ethics advisor. A journal-wide investigation identified violations of the journal's policies on authorship and conflict of interest related to the submission and review of this paper. Review of this submission was handled by the then journal Editor-in-Chief (Ashok Pandey) despite an extensive recent record of collaboration, including co-publication, with four of the paper co-authors (Mukesh Kumar Awasthi, Zengqiang Zhang, Anil K. Patel, Mohammad Taherzadeh). In addition, an authorship change was made during the revision of this paper; the author Anil Kumar Patel was added to the revised paper without validation or authorisation. Acceptance of the article was solely based upon the positive advice of reviewers who were closely linked to two of the authors (Awasthi and Patel). This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal's policies. This investigation was carried out by Elsevier's Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team, independent of the journal editorial board. The findings and recommendations have been confirmed by an independent ethics advisor. The authors disagree with the retraction and dispute the grounds for it.