Feed Conversion, Survival and Development, and Composition of Four Insect Species on Diets Composed of Food By-Products

By D. Oonincx, S. van Broekhoven, A. van Huis, J. V. van Loon. PLoS ONE, 2015

877 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A large part of the environmental impact of animal production systems is due to the production of feed. Insects are suggested to efficiently convert feed to body mass and might therefore form a more sustainable food and/or feed source. Four diets were composed from by-products of food manufacturing and formulated such as to vary in protein and fat content. These were offered to newly hatched Argentinean cockroaches, black soldier flies, yellow mealworms, and house crickets. The first two species are potentially interesting as a feed ingredient, while the latter two are considered edible for humans. Feed conversion efficiency, survival, development time, as well as chemical composition (nitrogen, phosphorus, and fatty acids), were determined. The Argentinean cockroaches and the black soldier flies converted feed more efficiently than yellow mealworms, and house crickets. The first two were also more efficient than conventional production animals. On three of the four diets yellow mealworms and house crickets had a feed conversion efficiency similar to pigs. Furthermore, on the most suitable diet, they converted their feed as efficiently as poultry, when corrected for edible portion. All four species had a higher nitrogen-efficiency than conventional production animals, when corrected for edible portion. Offering carrots to yellow mealworms increased dry matter- and nitrogen-efficiency and decreased development time. Diet affected survival in all species but black soldier flies, and development time was strongly influenced in all four species. The chemical composition of Argentinean cockroaches was highly variable between diets, for black soldier flies it remained similar. The investigated species can be considered efficient production animals when suitable diets are provided. Hence, they could form a sustainable alternative to conventional production animals as a source of feed or food.

Subfields: Genetics, Insect Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/da7ded343cc18938dea49e12c9cf8bd453e7812c

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Citations in the corpus

Standardisation of quantitative resource conversion studies with black soldier fly larvae (2020, methodology): “Furthermore, conversion efficiencies on fresh matter basis can be obscure as considerable variation is present in the DM levels of the diets (12.3% in Lardé (1990) to 31.7% in Oonincx et al. (2015)) and the larvae (17.9% in Tschirner and Simon (2015) to 38.8% in Finke (2013)).”
Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) Meal as a Promising Feed Ingredient for Poultry: A Comprehensive Review (2020, methodology): “9%, according to feed composition [35].”
Consumers’ perception of bakery products with insect fat as partial butter replacement (2020, background): “First of all, BSF LF contains about 70% of saturated FA, being lauric acid the most abundant one (> 40%) (Oonincx et al., 2015) which makes it solid at room temperature (20 °C).”
Nutritional value of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens L.) and its suitability as animal feed – a review (2017, methodology): “The use of BSF minilivestock is a challenge because despite ample research on various topics related to the effect of biotic and abiotic factors on its larval biology not only in tropical regions, but also in temperate regions, little information is available on how these factors affect the mature s”
A Review of the Scientific Literature for Optimal Conditions for Mass Rearing Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) (2018, neutral): “…Hardouin and Mahoux 2003; John et al. 1978; Martin and Hare 1941; Martin et al. 1976; Menezes et al. 2014; Morales-Ramos et al. 2010, 2013; Murray 1960; Oonincx et al. 2015; Rho and Lee 2014, 2015; Tindwa et al. 2015; Urrejola et al. 2011; van Broekhoven et al. 2016 Protein source Beer yeast…”
Life cycle assessment of cricket farming in north-eastern Thailand (2017, positive): “As other studies have shown, these sources could come from surplus production and perhaps evenwaste side streams or ingredients that cannot be used for feeding traditional livestock species (Collavo et al., 2005; Lundy and Parrella, 2015; Oonincx et al., 2015; Smetana et al., 2016).”
Black soldier fly larvae meal can replace fish meal in diets of sea-water phase Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) (2019, background): “Additional fish oil was included in the diets with less fishmeal (IM33, IM66 and IM100) to ensure sufficient dietary long-chained highly unsaturated FAs (LC-HUFAs).”
The environmental sustainability of insects as food and feed. A review (2017, background): “…as rice straw (Manurung et al. 2016), coffee pulp (Larde 1990), fish offal (St-Hilaire et al. 2007), DDGS (Webster et al. 2015), catering waste (Surendra et al. 2016) and swine, chicken and cattle manure (Sheppard et al. 1994; Newton et al. 2005; Oonincx et al. 2015a) is the black soldier fly (Fig.”
Review of Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) as Animal Feed and Human Food (2017, background): “Their feed conversion ratios are known to be superior to both crickets and mealworms, and, compared to those two, BSFL survival rate and nitrogen and phosphorus compositions do not vary as highly with diet [32].”