An eco-evolutionary guided approach to improve edible insect nutrient and feed conversion

Projektinformationen

EvoCricks

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101104155

DOI

10.3030/101104155

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 28 März 2023

Startdatum 16 Februar 2024

Enddatum 15 Februar 2026

Finanziert unter

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Gesamtkosten

Keine Daten

EU-Beitrag

€ 230 774,40

Koordiniert durch

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EvoCricks (An eco-evolutionary guided approach to improve edible insect nutrient and feed conversion)

Berichtszeitraum: 2024-02-16 bis 2026-02-15

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

The aim of this grant was to identify the local conditions and microbiomes in the field that result in the best nutritional quality crickets, then use laboratory tests on field collected populations and under field guided conditions to translate them to the industrial setting. The production of edible insects is often presented as a solution to the current environmental and food security challenge of feeding a growing human population, but faces major technical limitations. The premise of this project was that such technical limitations can be overcome by using existing methods and theory from the biological sciences. In this regard it is critical to understand how a variety of biotic and abiotic conditions affect the quantity, nutritional quality, safety and sustainability of insect production. Since the gut microbiome plays a fundamental role in driving the viability of animal food production, my aim was to explore the association between microbiomes and the production of insects as a food resource.

Aim 1. Using wild crickets of the commonly farmed species Acheta domesticus, my project aimed to decipher the relationship between the environment, microbiome composition, and the nutritional quality (essential nutrients) of edible insects as human food.

Aim 2. By contrasting knowledge gained from wild populations to controlled experimental results, dissect the production conditions that best reflect the findings from the field.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

Crickets were searched in 13 places in Europe and found in 9 of them across a latitudinal gradient. Crickets were searched during day and night in urban and suburban areas, and all the adult individuals seen were collected. The wild plants available as food, the altitude, the temperature and the humidity were collected in the place of capture. The guts of both the crickets from the wild and the laboratory experiments were dissected for microbiome extraction and analyses. We are now processing 212 faecal samples and guts from the wild crickets from WP2 and 295 from WP4 following the standardised methods used in one of the projects of the host centre, the Earth Holobiome Initiative. This is basically based on extracting the DNA from the samples and preparing the library for shotgun analyses. We have also polished the laboratory protocol for vitamin B12 measurements, which has involved a series of steps (i.e. extraction, purification and measurement using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography) to avoid biasing our results due to the presence of pseudovitamin B12 in these animals. In addition, we carried out an experiment where temperature and food conditions were manipulated in the laboratory. To do this, we reared the crickets born from industrial populations (F0) in 3 different temperatures (27, 30 and 33 C) and two diet conditions (low and high protein). The next generation of crickets (F1) was then reared and mated in each of their environmental conditions (Sample size 20 couples per treatment combination) and for females the number of eggs was counted. Finally, we dissected both male and female crickets for reproductive tissue measurements. We also dissected the guts for later genomic analyses and the rest of the animal was frozen for vitamin B12 analyses.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

This project has generated a series of advances that extend beyond current knowledge in insect ecology, microbiome research, and the study of nutritional value as food.

A central contribution is the establishment of a latitudinal dataset on wild cricket populations spanning nine locations across Europe, including measurements of environmental variables (temperature, humidity, altitude) and diet availability at the point of capture. This type of gradient-based sampling for wild insect microbiome research is rare, and the resulting data represent a novel resource for understanding how geography and local conditions shape gut microbial communities.

The project has also developed and refined a laboratory protocol for the precise quantification of vitamin B12 in insects and the construction of a cricket gut microbiome catalogue. On the experimental side, the multi-generational temperature and diet manipulation experiment provides early evidence that thermal stress (at 33°C) negatively affects reproductive output. The asymmetry in reproductive tissue investment between males and females adds to growing comparative data on sex-specific responses to environmental stressors.

The findings are of direct relevance to the growing insect farming industry, particularly regarding the sensitivity of cricket populations to environmental conditions. We still need to complete the genomic analyses, linking microbiome composition to phenotypic outcomes across the temperature and diet treatments, and extending the latitudinal sampling to additional populations.