Advances in Sustainable Food Production through Optimization of Insect Farming
Larvae of black soldier flies (left) and adult house flies (right). These two species are promising candidates in the commercial production of insect protein and both species have been investigated in the current project.
We spoke to Professor Torsten Nygaard Kristensen from Aalborg University in Denmark. His research team is working on optimizing the farming of efficient insect populations that can convert organic waste into high-value products. Their efforts will contribute to the development of sustainable food systems and address the rising global food demand.
As the global human population approaches 8 billion, we face a challenge to meet rising food demands while attempting to minimize the environmental damage caused by food production. Currently, traditional agriculture significantly strains the planet’s resources, while livestock farming contributes to climate change, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. Professor Torsten Nygaard Kristensen and his research team at the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience at Aalborg University in Denmark, are exploring innovative alternatives and solutions to these challenges, with insect farming emerging as a promising candidate because some insect species can be produced as food and feed more sustainably than traditional livestock species. In a collaborative project involving researchers also at the Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics and the Department of Biology at Aarhus University, Denmark, he works on ways to optimize insect production for animal feed, and human consumption. For the past four years, they have been exploring ways to enhance the efficiency of insect production through environmental and genetic improvements. “One part is, how can we optimize food and feed production through environmental improvements such as better production conditions involving optimizing temperatures, humidity, and other environmental factors. The second part is the genetic part, where our ambition is to adapt principles and tools that animal and plant breeders have been using for decades, to insects. This involves selective breeding where insects with superior genes coding for traits of interest are used as parents establishing the next generation. This work is focused on traits
of importance from a production point of view such as weight and protein content, but also on health and reproduction traits so that robust populations are generated. While we have made significant progress, it is important to recognize that, unlike livestock such as pigs, cattle, and poultry which are domesticated and have been bred by farmers for thousands of years—large-
scale insect farming is still a relatively new field in many parts of the world. This means that we have limited knowledge of the basic biology of most of the species that we work with and unlike traditional livestock we cannot easily keep track of genetic relationships making it challenging to execute e.g. selective breeding effectively” explains Prof. Nygaard Kristensen.
Flies can transform organic waste into high-value protein
In their work, Prof. Nygaard Kristensen and his team primarily work with two insect species; the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) and the house fly (Musca domestica). These insects have the potential to utilize and valorize low-quality waste products that cannot be used as feed for traditional livestock. The black soldier fly and the house fly have this ability to produce value from materials that are typically put into landfills, used as soil fertilisers, or burned for energy. From a sustainability point of view, it is far more efficient to process them through insects, and thereby convert them into valuable biomass. Insects, and especially the two species that we have worked with, are eminent in doing that, valorizing organic waste products that are not used optimally today.” says Prof. Nygaard Kristensen. While most research has focused on the larval stage (which is typically the harvested life stage), they have also focused on the adult biology of black soldier and house flies, especially reproduction and stress tolerance traits. One example of this work is a study led by a former PhD student on the project, Dr. Stine Frey Laursen who explains that one of her studies showed that even on diets of low nutritional value, the insects were able to complete their life cycle and produce viable eggs. Although these diets resulted in lower yields compared to higher-quality alternatives, using such waste streams as insect feed could still be a sustainable option, adding value to underutilized and wasted resources.
OPTImIzATION OF INSecT
PrOducTION FOr ANImAl
Feed ThrOugh breedINg
Project Objectives
The project “Optimization of insect production for animal feed through breeding” aims to optimize insect production for sustainable animal feed by improving environmental farming conditions and incorporating advanced genetic tools and selective breeding techniques that enhance specific production traits.
Project Funding
This project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF-0136-00171B).
Project Partners
“Instead of wasting these low-quality nutritional sources, it is far more efficient and sustainable to process them through insects, and thereby convert them into valuable biomass.”
Tackling the unique and unexpected challenges of insect breeding
Prof. Nygaard Kristensen and his team are also working on enhancing the genetics of insects through selective breeding and the use of quantitative genetic breeding tools that have been previously used in domestic livestock. The goal of this research is to improve production traits such as growth rate, body size, and reproduction, which is expected to make insect farming more efficient and sustainable. Selective breeding can be extremely successful in changing traits of interest across generations. This is exemplified by milk yield in dairy cattle and weight of broiler chicken which have been more than doubled during the last ca. 50 years.
So the idea is simple, namely to select those individuals that have genes that give rise to superior phenotypes for traits of interest in a given population and that this will lead to cumulative changes across generations However, breeding in insects is not without challenges. “Insects, like the black soldier flies, have very short generation intervals; it takes only a few weeks to go through the different life stages. In many ways, that is a benefit because it means that we can rapidly obtain genetically based changes. However, it also means we need to be able to phenotype individuals very quickly to identify the best individuals that should be used as parents, and this is a main challenge. Another challenge is that, unlike traditional livestock where individual animals can be tagged, e.g. using ear tags for identification, insect breeding involves managing thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of small individuals that molt (shed the exoskeleton) when passing from one life stage to another, making it impractical to track individuals. This means that obtaining a pedigreed population is challenging”
says Dr. Laura Skrubbeltrang Hansen, who has also been a PhD student on the project. Despite these challenges, the researchers have found solutions by using e.g. half-sib fullsib designs where one male is mated to a number of females so that both half and full siblings are produced. Fast automated phenotyping methods that apart from increasing the speed of assessing larval size also improve efficiency and accuracy are also an important outcome of the project. This system can be used in largescale breeding programs, since it allows for an efficient and unbiased phenotyping of large numbers of individuals, making the selection process faster and more reliable.
Additionally, to improve the breeding program, the researchers used whole genome sequencing to study two black soldier fly populations, one from Denmark and one in Texas, USA. This study showed marked genetic differences between the two populations and illustrated the power of using genomics to pinpoint signatures of selection, genetic drift and inbreeding. Although not part of this study, the approach taken illustrates the power of full genome sequencing in identifying genetic markers linked to important production traits, such as rapid growth and high protein content, paving the way for marker-assisted selection.
“A lot has been learned from this project and although challenging we can optimize production environments and use selective breeding on insects. This means that in the future we can develop more efficient, high-yielding insect populations aiding in solving major challenges of our and future generations which includes generating food for an increasing human population while reducing negative environmental impacts”
Prof. Nygaard Kristensen concludes.
Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Denmark, Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, Aarhus University, Denmark, Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Denmark.
contact details
Project Coordinator, Torsten Nygaard Kristensen Professor Department of Chemistry and Bioscience
The Faculty of Engineering and Science Functional Ecology and Genomics
Aalborg University
T: +45 61463375
e: tnk@bio.aau.dk
W: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/tnk
Stine Frey Laursen (left)
Torsten Nygaard Kristensen (centre) Laura Skrubbeltrang Hansen (right)
Torsten Nygaard Kristensen is an evolutionary biologist and professor at the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience at The Faculty of Engineering and Science at Aalborg University Denmark. His research interests include conservation and population genetics, ecophysiology, environmental stress adaptation, and animal breeding.
Stine Frey l aursen is an evolutionary biologist, working on improvement of insect production through environmental and genetic means. She is employed as a postdoc at Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Denmark. l aura Skrubbeltrang hansen is a quantitative geneticist, working on insect genetics and is employed as a postdoc at the Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, Aarhus University, Denmark.
