Group on Insect Nutrition: To Open Nutritional Innovative Challenges
The current global food system faces several challenges. These include producing sufficient high quality protein, decreasing environmental impact, and managing waste and by-products. Certain insect species are able to upcycle waste streams and valorise underutilized industrial byproducts. As approximately 70% of production costs, and about 50% of the environmental costs are associated with feed production optimizing this element is an essential step in maturing the insect industry.
If nutritional and dietary requirements of insects are understood, this decreases financial and environmental costs, and increases yields. In this way, high quality protein is produced, associated environmental impact decreases and waste cannot only be managed, it can be valorised. Hence, a thorough understanding of insect nutritional physiology is needed to further develop insect production systems. In the last 15 years the number of studies on insect nutrition has grown exponentially. To a large extent these studies tested a small set of ingredients to determine optimal inclusion percentages. Although this has furthered our understanding, the required fundamental knowledge on nutritional requirements is largely lacking, and more importantly, it is fragmented. This project creates a platform on which this fragmented knowledge is gathered from academic and industrial partners, synthesized and made publicly available. Besides creating an overview of the-state-of-the-art, it identifies gaps in knowledge fuelling the creation of new projects to fill these gaps by partners within this open network. It functions as a linking pin between applied and fundamental research, furthering our collective knowledge and fostering business opportunities.
Project Partners: 28 European and Associated countries
Funding: COST ACTION (2024–2029)
Work packages:
- WG 1 Comparative digestive physiology, microbiota, and feeding behaviour
- WG 2 Proteins and amino acids
- WG 3 Lipids, carbohydrates (energy ratios), and fat-soluble compounds such as sterols
- WG 4 Vitamins and mineral requirements
- WG 5 Materials and methods in insect nutrition research