Abstract
Worldwide, thousands of insect species are consumed as food or are used as feed ingredients. Hermetia illucens, ‘black soldier fly’, is one of them, and a large amount of puparia and dead adults flies are accumulated during rearing. These materials represent important wastes but no studies are still present in the literature regarding their functional properties and potential reuse. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are a heterogeneous group of bacteria contributing to various industrial applications, ranging from food fermentation, chemicals production to pharmaceuticals manufacturing. A LAB feature of industrial interest is their ability to produce antimicrobial metabolites. Considering the scientific and commercial interest in discovering novel antimicrobials, this work will be direct towards fermentation of insect-derived biomasses: puparia and adults insect at the end of life cycle. To the best of our knowledge, the in vitro antimicrobial activity of fermented insects is tested for the first time. This study aimed also to evaluate differences in the composition between fermented and unfermented insects, and to study whether the fermentation and the type of LAB used played a crucial role in modifying the composition of the substrate. Results firstly highlighted fermentability of this species of insects, showed that fermented black soldier flies puparium possess a high antimicrobial activity against tested pathogens. Moreover, result of chemical composition showed that fermented biomass had a higher percentage of fat and a more complex fatty acids profile.
Highlights
The world population is predicted to increase from 5.4 billion to about 9 billion within a few decades, and it is relevant to find new sources of high quality protein, different from soybean or animal source, to feed this additional population [1].To accommodate this number, insects represent a good alternative in terms of protein quality and environmental sustainability [2]
This study focused on Hermetia illucens, called black soldier flies (BSF), a Diptera belonging to Stratyiomidae family
We describe the fermentation of BSF and BSF-derived biomasses: prepupae, puparia and adults insects at the end of life cycle were used as substrates for Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) growth and the antimicrobial activity against different pathogens was determined by challenge test
Summary
The world population is predicted to increase from 5.4 billion to about 9 billion within a few decades, and it is relevant to find new sources of high quality protein, different from soybean or animal source, to feed this additional population [1]. To accommodate this number, insects represent a good alternative in terms of protein quality and environmental sustainability [2]. In accordance with Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/893 [8], this insect is one of the seven species approved for feeding of aquaculture animals and thanks to its high nutritional value [9], and to its ability to convert industrial waste [10,11,12,13,14] is one of the most promising to be used in the feed industry
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