Sustainability Webinar | Sustainable Insect Farming: Feed the Future

On Tuesday 3 May 2022, MDPI and the Journal Sustainability organized their 9^th webinar entitled “Sustainable Insect Farming: Feed the Future”.

As a follow-up event of the Special Issue in Sustainability entitled: “Sustainable Insect Farming: Feed the Future”, this webinar, under the same title, shed light to the highly innovative topic, that ranges among different research and innovation areas, from insect and animal nutrition, to the formation of new food and new dietary supplements, to waste management, to environmentally compatible circular economy attributes and many more. That was also the ambition of this event: to cover, as much as possible, the different disciplines of this extremely large variety of insect use in food and feed, through the expertise of the panelists of the webinar.

The introduction was held by the Chair of the webinar, Prof. Dr. Christos Athanassiou from the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology, Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment, University of Thessaly, Greece. His research is focused on insect biology and detection, and implementation strategies of chemical and non-chemical control in pest management programs for field, stored-product and forest pests, but also on edible insects.

The first speakers to kick off this webinar were Dr. Sergiy Smetana and Mr. János-István Petrusán, both from the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL e.V.), Quakenbrück, Germany. They spoke about insect farming and its environmental footprint. Sergiy’s main focus of his research is sustainability assessment of innovative food processing technologies, alternative protein sources and data analysis of complex food systems. János is currently responsible for technical and scientific support for project-proposal elaboration, fundraising and project implementation procedures, including PMI-conform project management, dully adhered to standard protocols.

The second presentation with the title "Using Agricultural By-Products in Insect Farming" was held by Dr. Christos Rumbos from the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology, Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment, University of Thessaly, Greece. During the last 7 years he has been working exclusively on the exploitation and mass production of insects as food and feed.

Dr. Brenda Oppert from the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Center for Grain and Animal Health Research, Manhattan, KS, USA was the third speaker and her presentation was entitled "Genetics of Insects for Food and Feed, and Practical Utilization". Her research originally focused on insect gut biochemistry and toxin mode of action, but in 2007 she began working in the area of insect functional genomics.

The fourth presentation, entitled "Lessons Learned From Feeding Trials" was held by Dr. Ilias Giannenas from the Laboratory of Nutrition, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Dr. Giannenas is particularly interested in issues of applied poultry nutrition, the use of aromatic plants, plant extracts and essential oils as alternative growth promoters or natural anticoccidials.

The last presentation with the title "Insect Farming in Large Scale: Quo Vadis?" was held by Dr. David Derytter from the Insect Research Centre, Inagro, Belgium. Dr. Derytter’s research topics include, but are not restricted to, optimization of breeding, feed, climate, genes, etc. in terms of product quality and economic efficiency.

The presentations were followed by a Q&A and a discussion, moderated by the Chair. The webinar was offered via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be found here on Sciforum website. In order to stay updated on the next webinars on Sustainability, be sure to sign up for our newsletter by clicking on “Subscribe” at the top of the page.