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Using insects to turn waste into valuable products
CategoriesSustainable News

Using insects to turn waste into valuable products

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: According to a paper from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, 36 per cent of the world’s crop calories are actually used for animal feed, which is an inefficient way of producing food. For example, it takes about 100 calories of grain to produce just 12 calories of chicken or three calories of beef. However, a biotech startup in India is developing a more efficient way to feed livestock – using insects.

Instead of growing grain, Loopworm farms black soldier flies and processes them into animal feed products. The insects are raised on food waste sourced from food processors, retail chains, and fruit markets. Once grown, the insects are processed into animal and fish feed.

The finished meal is high in protein, containing around 60 per cent crude protein. The company also claims that it is rich in bio-active peptides which promote anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, and anti-microbial properties. Because of this, it can be used as an ingredient in fish, poultry, and even pet food formulations as a replacement for fish meal. The feed also has a lower ash content than traditional meals, which makes it more digestible.

Co-founders Ankit Alok Bagaria and Abhi Gawri set up Loopworm to help solve India’s food waste problem. Bagaria explains: “Our major concern was that we had a significant amount of food waste in India … and there wasn’t much of a meaningful solution, where food waste is actually upcycled. There are solutions like composting, or biogas generation, which actually down cycles the product.”

Insect farming has been gaining traction in recent years as entrepreneurs and scientists search for alternative ways of producing protein for animal and human consumption. Some other innovations that Springwise has spotted include using insects to produce aquaculture feed, and a project that converts waste into animal feed using insects.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

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Using insects as sustainable bioreactor replacements for lab research
CategoriesSustainable News

Using insects as sustainable bioreactor replacements for lab research

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: One day in 2018, Matt and Jalene Anderson-Baron were standing in line at the University of Alberta Tim Hortons discussing how to grow a cell-based chicken nugget without using foetal bovine serum (which is harvested from bovine foetuses during slaughter). The two wondered if they could use fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, to act as a substitute for bioreactors. The result of this conversation was Future Fields and its fruit-fly-based EntoEngine.

Bioreactors (which look like giant steel tanks) are used to generate the biomolecules needed for things like medicine, vaccines, and cultivated meat. However, bioreactors have a large carbon footprint. To reduce this, Future Fields uses fruit flies as a replacement. The process begins by identifying the protein that they want to produce and cloning the necessary DNA sequence.

Future Fields inserts the DNA into the fruit fly genome and breeds the flies. It then extracts and purifies the protein, and tests for quality. Compared to traditional recombinant protein production methods, Future Fields’ insect-based EntoEngine uses less water and energy, emits fewer greenhouse gases, and has a smaller land footprint. It also produces waste products that have other uses, contributing to a circular economy.

Video source Future Fields

Co-founder Matt Anderson-Baron explains: “We’ve passed a tipping point where it’s scaling, not creating, biotech-based products that is the fundamental hurdle for founders, companies, and entire industries. Our approach is 30 times faster than tanks and more or less infinitely scalable with minimal investment.”

Future Fields recently $11.2 million (around €10.5 million), which will be used to scale the team and construct a “world first” production facility.

Researchers are increasingly turning to insects to improve sustainability. Some of the innovations Springwise has also spotted include a project that uses flies to convert food waste into animal feed and fertiliser, and salmon feed made from plastic-fed waxworms.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

Feeding fish with plastic-eating insects 
CategoriesSustainable News

Feeding fish with plastic-eating insects 

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Seafood is one of the most highly traded commodities in the global food system, and in 2018, for the first time in history, global farmed fish production surpassed that of beef production. And experts expect demand for aquatic foods to double by 2050. How to sustainably farm fish to meet such high levels of global demand is a pressing concern for the aquaculture industry.  

Part of that concern lies in finding the best solution to the challenge of what to feed farmed fish. Many growers seek circular solutions that minimise waste at all stages of the production process, including Glasgow-based researchers who recently discovered a surprising option for fishmeal. The team found that waxworms fed on plastic appeared more digestible to salmon than those fed on a regular diet. 

Set up by Dr. Martin Llewellyn at the University of Glasgow, SalmoSim is an in-vitro Atlantic Salmon gut simulator that helps those in the aquaculture industry test out new medicines or feedstock for farmed fish. The team provides tailored experiments that analyse the absorption of sugars, volatile fatty acids, amino acids, and more throughout a salmon’s digestive process, and it was in one of these experiments that plastic-fed waxworms were found to be a highly digestible feed.  

By reducing demand for marine-grown fish meal, plastic-fed waxworms could provide a dual purpose – reducing plastic waste while feeding the high volumes of fish demanded by a growing global market. The research team’s next steps include assessing the healthfulness of the salmon fed on the waxworms for human consumption.  

Springwise has spotted other innovations improving the sustainability of the aquaculture industry, including tiles made from fish scales and a cellular growth technology used to make cultivated seafood.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Controlling harmful insects with gene technology 
CategoriesSustainable News

Controlling harmful insects with gene technology 

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Although insects are crucial to the global ecosystem, some threaten humanity by ruining crops, spreading disease, and invading local ecosystems. To fight back, people have leaned on toxic pesticides, but at the detriment of other wildlife and human health. Thankfully, Italian startup Biocentis has found another solution that eludes these harmful side effects using CRISPR-based gene editing. 

The company’s proposed alternative builds on research from Imperial College London and uses the sterile insect technique (SIT) – where a target species of insects is sterilised to decrease the amount of successful mating in the wild. Biocentis plans on improving this approach by using the advanced gene-editing technology CRISPR to progressively reduce egg production and locally control insect species.  

Professor Andrea Crisanti in Imperial’s Department of Life Sciences, a co-founder of Biocentis, explains that “our solutions will alleviate the burden imposed by vector-borne diseases, improve agriculture productivity, and reduce the damage from the use of traditional pesticides, addressing the agenda of a future green economy – a sustainable model that combines reduced environmental impact with significant improvements in the health and livelihoods of communities around the world.” 

Biocentis is currently active in Italy, the UK, and the USA and has recently received seed funding from Neurone to further round and develop the company and its employees.  

Springwise has previously spotted other innovations that hope to minimise our reliance on harmful pesticides, including a natural pesticide and a drone that detects infectious diseases in bugs.

Written By: Georgia King

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