Abstract
Since the world’s population will continue to grow in the next decades, the problem of providing people with food will deepen. One-third of the food production volume is wasted while nearly one in ten people in the world suffer from hunger. To reduce the negative impact of human activity on the environment and meet the needs of the population, alternative sources of protein are proposed. Yellow mealworm larvae can be used as a source of food and animal feed. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the growth performance, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and efficiency of ingested feed (ECI) by yellow mealworm larvae fed 13 different diets containing chicken feed (CF), rapeseed meal (RM), wheat bran (WB) and willowleaf sunflower (WS) residues after the process of supercritical CO2 extraction. The mean dry individual bodyweight for all diets used in the experiment was 31.44 mg dry matter (d.m.) Mealworms fed diet mixes that contained WB demonstrated the highest dry individual larval weight (from 40.9 to 47.9 mg d.m.). A significantly lower dry individual larval weight was found for mealworms fed solely WS residues (3.9 mg d.m.). The FCR ranged from 1.57 to 2.08, for pure CF and pure WS diet, respectively. The ECI of yellow mealworm larvae varied significantly (mean value 20.1%) and depended on the diet. Moreover, the ECI of mealworm was significantly the lowest and amounted to 5.9% for the pure WS diet. The industrial residues investigated in this study can be successfully used for mealworm farming, excluding pure willowleaf sunflower residues.
Highlights
Since the world’s population is predicted to reach 10 billion in the three decades [1], it poses a problem for humanity and a challenge [2] for researchers and scientists
This paper presents preliminary results of a study which aimed to compare the growth performance, feed conversion ratio, efficiency of ingested feed by mealworm larvae fed with different types of agricultural and industrial residues
It was found that both traits significantly differed and these differences were determined by the factor and the interactions between factors
Summary
Since the world’s population is predicted to reach 10 billion in the three decades [1], it poses a problem for humanity and a challenge [2] for researchers and scientists. One-third of food is wasted [3,4] and nearly one in ten people suffer from hunger and food insecurity [5]. Another problem related to food quality, i.e., obesity, results from the overconsumption of some products, especially animal products [6]. There is enormous pressure on the environment to meet the demand for food [7]. Out of the total arable land, about 70% is used for animal husbandry [4]
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