Source: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA submitted to
ADDING VALUE AND SUSTAINABILITY TO THE FOOD INDUSTRY: MEALWORM PROTEIN INGREDIENT AS EXTRACT AND POWDER
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
TERMINATED
Funding Source
SMALL BUSINESS GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1017023
Grant No.
2018-33610-28952
Project No.
FLAK-2018-03211
Proposal No.
2018-03211
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
8.5
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2018
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2022
Grant Year
2021
Project Director
Dossey, A. T.
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
118 NEWINS-ZEIGLER HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Adding Value and Sustainability to the Food Industry: Mealworm Protein Ingredient as Extract and PowderThe goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021. To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects, are offered by companies. Crickets have been the primary focus of the market. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect based food industry must innovate and diversify. Mealworms have potential advantages over crickets. They tend to be more disease resistant, can be produced in smaller spaces at higher density and may be more amenable to mechanized automated farming. Additionally, developing and evaluating protein extracts made from mealworms and crickets will aid food companies in their goal to add higher levels of insect protein to products without adding fat calories or negatively affecting product quality.As the human population grows, it is ever more important to sustain rather than increase levels of consumption from earth and it's ecosphere. Current sources of protein are unsustainable. Already 70% of agricultural land, 30% of the land on earth, is used for livestock. Diversification of our food supply is critical for food security. The good news is farming insects, ie. mealworms (Yellow Mealworm, Tenebrio molitor), holds promise as a sustainable solution. They utilize less energy, feed, land and water than other livestock, contributing less to climate change and pollution. Indeed, insects are gaining momentum as a food ingredient. Starting 2011-2013, over 30 companies in North America, 50 in Europe, offer food products with insects as a key ingredient. In fact, All Things Bugs LLC has led the development of crickets as a protein source, selling over 15,000 pounds of its Griopro® cricket powder. However, the food industry has a big demand for adding more protein to products without adding calories or changing the texture, flavor and aroma. Our Phase I research has shown fats, oils and other components in whole insect powders limit the amount of protein that can be added without negatively affecting product. Thus, the overall objective of this Phase II is to develop and evaluate mealworm powder and insect protein extracts as viable ingredients for the food industry. With these funds we will develop an insect protein extract and production methodology and evaluate it along side whole mealworm and cricket powders based on: 1) shelf life, 2) safety, 3) nutritional value and 4) performance and functionality as ingredients in mainstream staple food products. If successful, this project will be a critical step toward revolutionizing the food industry by adding value to and diversifying an industry based on an entire Class of animals largely ignored to date - Insecta.All Things Bugs LLC (www.crickepowder.com) (founded July 19, 2011) with its President, Founder and Owner Dr. Aaron T. Dossey, has emerged as a pioneer and world leader in this new field and industry. Recently, major news sources have covered insect as a novel source of food, often mentioning his company. Examples include: Huffington Post, Forbes, Fortune, Fast Company, The New Yorker, Fox News and others. Further, Dr. Dossey published the first comprehensive foundational reference text book, "Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients" covering all aspects of insects as food. He attended the UN FAO Expert Consultation in 2012 in Rome, Italy on the potential contribution of insects to food security. Using its patent pending technology for production of insect based food ingredients (such as Griopro® cricket powder), his company has sold product to numerous food companies, and has received over $3 million in research grant funding from the USDA, DARPA and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
25%
Developmental
75%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
50250101130100%
Knowledge Area
502 - New and Improved Food Products;

Subject Of Investigation
5010 - Food;

Field Of Science
1130 - Entomology and acarology;
Goals / Objectives
Our company has become an integral part of the insect based food industry, largely as a result of successful commercialization of SBIR innovations. Our current Phase I project has been highly successful and we now plan in Phase II to make final refinements on these innovations and develop them to be commercialization-ready by the end of Phase II. The overall objective of this Phase II proposal is to develop and evaluate a high-quality protein extract ingredient made from farm raised insects. We have long stated that there are 2 primary areas in need of technological advancement for the insect based food industry: 1) processing and 2) farming. This Phase II project, extending from our Phase I successes, will contribute further to the area of insect processing. For Phase II we will develop and evaluate a high quality pilot scale insect protein extract food ingredient and compare it with the whole mealworm powder developed in Phase I via the following objectives: 1) Evaluate and develop a defatting protocol from farm raised insect material, 2) Develop an industrially relevant pilot scale protein extraction protocol using farm raised insect material and 3) Produce and evaluate our insect protein extract as a functional food ingredient. Our innovations in Phase II will provide greater market incentive and demand for the food industry to utilize insect based protein ingredients. The section on "Phase II Work Plan" will describe how we plan to address these questions. These answers will address the interests of industry customers and consumers toward optimizing the commercialization and market potential for high quality protein powder products made from mealworms. All objectives and experiments will be designed to build on Phase I prototypes, discoveries and successes toward developing market-ready models for commercialization by the end of Phase II. Below are the primary objectives for Phase II designed to address these barriers toward realizing robust market potential for insect-derived protein ingredients for human food products.1. Evaluate and develop a defatting protocol for farm raised insect material: Develop an efficient and industrially relevant defatting protocol for farm raised insect material.Can raw frozen/thawed farm raised mealworms/crickets be efficiently defatted using standard food industry solvents/processing equipment?Can spray dried powders made from farm raised insects be efficiently defatted using standard food industry solvents/processing equipment?2. Develop an industrially relevant pilot scale protein extraction protocol using farm raised insect material: Develop a protocol to produce pilot and industrial scale quantities of farm raised insect powder resulting in a high-quality protein powder extract useful as a food or beverage ingredient.Is it necessary to defat raw farm raised insects (mealworms / crickets) prior to efficient protein extraction?Is it necessary to defat spray dried insect powder prior to efficient and effective protein extraction?What industrially relevant reagents and protocols are needed for the most efficient and cost-effective system for producing high quality protein extracts made from farm raised insects?3. Production and Evaluation of Insect Protein Extract as a functional food ingredient: Produce a pilot scale batch of insect protein extract using methods developed in other objectives. Determine the functionality and overall product quality and usefulness parameters of a pilot scale protein extract produced from farm raised insects.What is the shelf life/stability of protein extract/isolate made from farm raised insects compared with spray dried whole insect powders?How do protein extracts made from farm raised insects perform as a functional ingredient in various mainstream staple food products?What is the nutritional value of protein extracts made from farm raised insects?
Project Methods
Objective 1. Evaluate and develop a defatting protocol for farm raised insect material: During Phase I we were able to rapidly develop and evaluate a very high quality finely milled whole mealworm powder made utilizing our proprietary process. In Phase II Objective 1 we will:Task 1: Produce pilot scale batches of spray dried finely milled whole mealworm and cricket powders for downstream evaluation and R&D (defatting and protein extract work etc.). We will need to produce batches of finely milled cricket and mealworm powder for 1) initial starting material for our protein extraction work, 2) comparison between cricket and mealworm, 3) conducting additional longer term ambient shelf-life, 4) performing product performance (pre-cooked extruded pasta and texturized protein meat alternative) studies and 5) other studies (see Objective 3 below) for proper comparison of the whole insect powders to the protein extracts developed in this Phase II project. Finely milled whole insect powder will be produced using the following proprietary spray drying methodology.Task 2: Test various solvents and defatting procedures relevant to the food industry. The overall goal of this research is to develop a commercially relevant process for the production of high quality protein derived from insects. The scope of work will determine the applicability toward insect protein of the best practices used within the food industry to make existing protein concentrates or isolate ingredients found in nearly all foods. Important criteria used to determine process performance will be yield, protein purity, and scalability. Choice and order of preparation conditions impacts defatting, as well as extraction and functionality of protein quality and yield. Task 2 of Objective 1 will be performed primarily at Texas A&M Extraction and Protein Technologies Program, Process Engineering Research and Development Center under strict direction, experimental design and Research and Development guidance and management of Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Also, some benchtop preliminary solvent extraction and other experimentation will be performed at All Things Bugs LLC's chemistry laboratory at University Research Park in Oklahoma City. Some details of our methodology are proprietary and/or trade secrets and thus will not be described in further detail here.Objective 2. Develop an industrially relevant pilot scale protein extraction protocol using farm raised insect material: We will evaluate extraction methods utilizing both defatted and non-defatted insect materials to determine if defatting is necessary prior to protein extraction to produce product with the best, most cost effective and efficient process. Target product will be at least 90% protein by weight.Task 1: Develop an efficient industrially relevant protocol for production of an insect protein extract powder consisting of at least 90% protein. We will determine the best methodology for producing protein extracts from these raw materials, which raw material performs best and most efficiently, giving the best quality product. Success will be assessed by protein content, solubility, residual oil, yield and scalability.Objective 3. Production and Evaluation of Insect Protein Extract as a functional food ingredient:As stated above, customers and consumers want to know if they can achieve higher protein content in their food without decreasing product functionality or appeal. During this phase of the project, we will test the ability of an insect protein extract to increase protein content in foods, while maintaining an acceptable end product:Task 1: Utilizing best performing starting materials, methodologies and reagents in Objectives 1 and 2, produce a pilot scale (approximately 200 pounds) batch of high quality insect protein extract of at least 90% protein. Best methods and materials selected by a number of factors: 1) ease and efficiency of processing, 2) determination if defatting step is necessary and 3) market factors (minimize solvent or "chemical" use, visual product quality, protein yield, etc.). This product will be evaluated for several quality attributes based on studies including its shelf life, nutrient content and functionality as an ingredient in several staple food products. This work will primarily be done at Texas A&M facility mentioned earlier under the strict guidance and supervision of Dr. Aaron T. Dossey of All Things Bugs LLC.Task 2: Further evaluation and testing of finely milled whole mealworm powder for comparison to insect protein extract: nutrient, shelf-life, allergen and mycotoxin. We will collect a full nutrient content panel on the finely milled whole mealworm powder and protein extract developed in this Phase II project for comparison to Phase I data (including Protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS) protein quality evaluation, amino acid profile, fatty acid profile and vitamins and minerals of interest to the food industry). Additionally, we will evaluate mealworm powder based on reasonable toxin and allergen risks. We will test both the whole mealworm powder (Objective 1) and pilot scale protein extract (Objective 3) for presence/levels of the following common foodborne allergens/toxins: Mycotoxins: 1) Aflatoxin, 2) Vomitoxin, 3) Zearalenone, 4) Ochratoxin, 5) Fumonisin; Allergens: 1) Egg Allergen, 2) Gluten Allergen, 3) Soy Allergen; Other Toxins: 1) Heavy Metals. The toxin, allergen and microbiological analyses will be conducted by a contract service provider laboratory of high caliber experienced in these sorts of studies. Dr. Aaron T. Dossey (All Things Bugs LLC) will direct all aspects of the experiments performed and analyze all data collected. Shelf life and storage conditions are important for marketing and sales of food products.PDCAAS (Protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score) protein quality determination for finely milled whole mealworm powder: The PDCAAS is a published AOAC method for determining quality of a protein in a food.Task 3: Conduct additional product development testing on finely milled whole mealworm powder: pre-cooked extruded pasta and texturized protein meat alternative. We will round out Phase I results and make a gluten-free pasta using finely milled whole mealworm and cricket powders on an extruder for comparison with Phase I data and data on the proposed Phase II insect protein extract product development. This product development experimentation will be performed at the University of Nebraska's Food Processing Center (UNL FPC) under the direction of Dr. Dossey of All Things Bugs LLC. Additionally, Dr. Dossey will use All Things Bugs LLC's facilities and equipment when feasible.Task 4: Evaluate shelf-life (accelerated shelf-life study) and other attributes of insect protein extract including: nutrient content and aspects of product safety (mycotoxin and allergen content). Insect protein extract created in Phase II will be a unique product with its own characteristics, performance, qualities and value different from whole mealworm powder. Thus, we will evaluate the shelf-life, nutrient, mycotoxin and allergen content of this Phase II pilot scale insect protein extract.Task 5: Evaluate insect protein extract via product performance and functionality as a food ingredient in various mainstream/staple foodstuffs. Product/Application Performance of protein extract: Evaluate 5 different mainstream food products using our protein extract as an ingredient. Products will be: 1) extruded puffed snacks, 2) cereals, 3) pastas, 4) tortillas and 5) texturized protein meat alternative. Standard industrial formulations will be the basis of these products. Some product development experimentation will be performed at the University of Nebraska's Food Processing Center (UNL FPC) under the direction of Dr. Dossey of All Things Bugs LLC. Additionally, Dr. Dossey will use All Things Bugs LLC's facilities and equipment.

Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:The goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021 (Digitaljournal.com, 2016). Other reports indicate the current market at $423 million, growing to $722 million by 2024 (Marketwatch, 2016). To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects, are offered by companies. Crickets have been the primary focus of the market. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect based food industry must innovate and diversify. Mealworms have potential advantages over crickets. They tend to be more disease resistant, can be produced in smaller spaces at higher density and may be more amenable to mechanized automated farming. Additionally, developing and evaluating protein extracts made from mealworms and crickets will aid food companies in their goal to add higher levels of insect protein to products without adding fat calories or negatively affecting product quality. Changes/Problems: As with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic set this project back for us and continues to inhibit progress in commercializing technology as well as making desired research progress. However, we are happy that within the past year (2021-2022) we have re-vamped things and are very well back on track toward refining our innovations and pursuing commercial opportunities, particularly recently (late 2022). The problems we encountered during the project were 2 fold: 1) most importantly, difficulty in finding affordable access to small/pilot scale food processing equipment (in our case, small scale extruders for puffed extruded snacks, cereals, pastas and related products using small amounts of ingredient feasible to produce for this type of project, and particular difficulty finding access to small/pilot scale equipment for defatting of insect protein or producing extracts/isolates) and 2) unreliable subcontractors (especially at Universities). These 2 problems are very common to startups like ours and we have experienced them before. It would be very helpful to the mission of the SBIR program if the government could help startups/small businesses access/purchase small/pilot scale equipment and facilities via allowing us to buy our own equipment and facilities or investing in more experimental food processing, chemistry and other types of small/pilot scale contract service facilities available to us at affordable rates for an SBIR Phase I or II project. Our original sub-contractor for the defatting and protein precipitation experiments was at Texas A&M University. They were very slow and did nothing for several months, and would not provide us with data or reports. We finally cancelled our contract with them and replaced them with the Center for Crops Utilization Research in the Food Science Department at Iowa State University. We have had no troubles on a technical level - we simply needed to find reliable access to the equipment and facilities required for our work at affordable rates. Our research, experiments and technical results have been fantastic, very fruitful, useful and valuable. We are happy with our experiments and we made very useful discoveries on how to process farm raised insects into defatted protein, protein extract and insect oil byproduct. We are very excited about the commercial implications of our results from the project and are working on and following up with opportunities to bring these innovations to market soon. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Publications, Presentations and Other Publicized Work Products (no max pages) Selected Subset of Presentations and Abstracts: 2018: Food science conference (Havana, Cuba, 2018); CICTA14 - 2018 XIV CONFERENCIA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE CIENCIA Y TECNOLOGÍA DE LOS ALIMENTOS; May 21-25, 2018; Palacio de Convenciones; La Habana, Cuba; Oral Presentation; SIMPOSIO ALIMENTACIÓN Y SALUD; Title: "Developing insects for food, feed, pharma and other valuable Applications"; (Abstract: CLICK HERE); Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Room: Sala 3; May 22, 2018; 11:30-11:45 AM. IFT 2018; Speaker; Aaron T. Dossey; July 15-18, "Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients: Farming, Processing, and Genetics" in the Symposium "Hot Topics Session: Technological Advances and New Insights into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry from Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. IFT 2018; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; July 15-18, "Hot Topics Session: Technological Advances and New Insights into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry from Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. 2019: KoSFoST International Symposium and Annual Meeting; June 26-28, 2019; Songdo Convensia; Incheon, South Korea; PAID INVITED Oral Presentation; Title: "Developing Insects as a Sustainable Resource for Food, Feed, Pharma and Other Valuable Applications"; in the section on "Insect-Based Food"; Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Wednesday, June 26, 2019; 3:45-5:45 PM. UNC Clean Tech Summit; Annual Conference; February 28 - March 1, 2019; UNC Friday Center (University of North Carolina); Chapel Hill, NC, USA; PAID INVITED Expert Panel Title: "Alternative Proteins"; Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Room: Bellflower; Thursday, February 28, 2019; 1:30-2:45 PM. Buddhi Lamsal, Hui Wang, Praphan Pinsirodom, and Aaron T. Dossey. Applications of Insect?Derived Protein Ingredients in Food and Feed Industry, (2019). Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society (JAOCS). Volume 96, Issue 2, February 2019, Pages 105-123. IFT 2019; Speaker; Aaron T. Dossey; June 25, 2019, "State of the Industry: Developing Insects as Food, Feed, Pharma and Other Valuable Applications" in the Symposium "Technological Advances and New Insights Into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry From Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. IFT 2019; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; June 2-5, 2019, "Technological Advances and New Insights Into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry From Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. IFT 2019; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; June 2-5, 2019, "Food Safety and Regulation of Insect Based Food"; Chicago, IL, USA. 2020: Oppert, B., Perkin, L.C., Lorenzen, M. and Dossey, A.T. Transcriptome analysis of life stages of the house cricket, Acheta domesticus, to improve insect crop production. (2020). Scientific Reports. 10, 3471. Fiebelkorn; Nils Puchert; Aaron T. Dossey. An Exercise on Data-Based Decision Making: Comparing the Sustainability of Meat & Edible Insects. (2020) The American Biology Teacher. 82 (8): Volume 82, Issue 8. pp. 522-528. Juan Alfredo Morales-Ramos, Maria Guadalupe Rojas, Aaron T. Dossey and Mark Berhow, Self-selection of food ingredients and agricultural by-products by the house cricket, Acheta domesticus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae): A holistic approach to develop optimized diets, (2020) PLOS ONE, 15(1): e0227400. Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); General Meeting; February 23 - February 26, 2020; JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort; Marco Island, FL.; Selected as a "Flash Talk"; Monday, February 24, 2020; Title: "Developing Genetic Resources and Engineering Insects for Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Clausa Ballroom; 11:20 AM - 11:40 AM (mine was the last talk of the set). Plant & Animal Genomics Conference (PAG); Annual Conference; January 11- 15, 2020; Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA; Title: "W416 Developing Insects for Food, Feed and Bioproduction: White-Eye Marker for CRISPR/Cas9 in Crickets and Mealworms"; in the workshop "Farmed Insects to Feed Future Populations". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Room: Royal Palm Salon 3-4; Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020; 2:40 PM. Plant & Animal Genomics Conference (PAG); Annual Conference; January 11- 15, 2020; Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA; Title: " W413 Workshop Introduction", in the workshop "Farmed Insects to Feed Future Populations". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Room: Royal Palm Salon 3-4; Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020; 1:30 PM. Plant & Animal Genomics Conference (PAG); Annual Conference; January 11- 15, 2020; Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA; Title: " W058 The ABCs of using CRISPR in Non-Model Organisms", in the workshop "Application of New Genomic Tools and Techniques in Arthropods". Dr. Clay Fu-Chyun, Chu and Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Room: Royal Palm Salon 1-2; Saturday, Jan 11, 2020, 7:35 PM. 2021: PATENT ISSUED: Aaron T. Dossey, INSECT PRODUCTS AND METHODS OF MANUFACTURE AND USE THEREOF, Mexico, Patent Number: 384003 (Application number MX/a/2016/006081); National Stage Entry of International Patent Application Number: PCT/US2014/064920. 2022: PATENT ISSUED: Aaron T. Dossey, INSECT PRODUCTS AND METHODS OF MANUFACTURE AND USE THEREOF, United States, U.S.Patent Number: 11,337,451; U.S. Patent Application Number: 14/537,960; International Patent Application Number: PCT/US14/64920. PATENT ISSUED: Aaron T. Dossey, INSECT PRODUCTS AND METHODS OF MANUFACTURE AND USE THEREOF, Canada, Patent Application Number: 2,929,177; National Stage Entry of International Patent Application Number: PCT/US2014/064920. Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); Agriculture Meeting (first ever agriculture meeting for AGBT); April 4-6, 2022; Lowes Coronado Bay Resort, Coronado Island, San Diego, CA, USA; Selected as a "Flash Talk"; Monday, February 24, 2020; Title: " Cutting Edge Genomics and Engineering Insects for Sustainable Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T.Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Wednesday, April 6, 2022, held in the Commodore Ballroom from 10:20am - 10:40am. Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); Agriculture Meeting (first ever agriculture meeting for AGBT); April 4-6, 2022; Lowes Coronado Bay Resort, Coronado Island, San Diego, CA, USA; Poser# 803; Title: " Cutting Edge Genomics and Engineering Insects for Sustainable Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Exhibit Hall & Sponsor Promenade/ Avalon. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This project, while delayed, has been quite successful and we have made some very valuable and helpful discoveries. Our work has also generated a lot of public interest and several publications and presentations at prestigious conferences, etc. The following lists our discoveries, successes, achievements, publications and presentations: ?Discoveries and Successes: We have discovered that ethanol out-performs hexane and acetone by far for defatting of insect powders. This is excellent news because ethanol tends to be safer than the other solvents for use in a food environment and customers/food industry/the public are less concerned about the safety of ethanol than other solvents so this could be a good selling point in our future commercialization of defatted insect material and insect protein extracts. Additionally, if we choose to seek organic status for these extracts, ethanol is more likely to be approved as a solvent for organic status than the others. Determined that temperature does not have a significant effect on solvent defatting of insect material, and defatting can be done rapidly without long incubations or treatments. Determined that defatting prior to protein precipitation for insect materials is the best approach, not the reverse. Discovered that sifting of course spray dried insect material (keeping the chitin fragments large) is an excellent way to separate chitin from insect protein, and defatting before sifting improves the separation. In general via defatting and sifting alone (starting with spray dried insect powder) we can achieve an insect protein product with vastly reduced chitin and 80-90% protein content by dry weight. This product alone is a significant win and could be very valuable commercially for the food and animal feed industries. Alkaline precipitation of defatted insect powder followed by acid precipitation of the alkaline soluble fraction produces at least 3 protein and 1 fat/oil product. One of the protein precipitates is approximately 10-15% of the total insect material (by dry weight) and about 100% pure protein. Browning inhibitors (anti-oxidants) when blended with raw insect slurry early in processing prior to downstream defatting and/or protein precipitation can help reduce or mitigate additional browning to yield a lighter colored or possibly even nearly white insect protein extract product. The shelf-stability of spray dried jet milled mealworm powder seems to be at least slightly better than that of cricket powder, especially based on analytical chemistry markers of rancidity even though it is higher in fat. This is a very exciting result from a major part of this project (mealworm powder shelf-life) as it demonstrates that mealworm powder remains a good quality ingredient for a significant amount of time and its fat is stable. This, on top of the other benefits of mealworms over crickets (easier to rear and process, easier to harvest and handle, easier to farm with lower mortality and disease issues, dry rearing conditions, high rearing density and other benefits), shows that mealworm powder could out-perform cricket powder as a major commodity. Both mealworm and cricket powders add a meat-like flavor profile to texturized plant protein. While they do not improve the texture, they do not detract from it at moderate levels of incorporation. Thus these insect powders could be a valuable way for the food industry to add sustainable nutrition and meat-like flavor to these sort of meat alternative products.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Food science conference (Havana, Cuba, 2018); CICTA14 - 2018 XIV CONFERENCIA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE CIENCIA Y TECNOLOG�A DE LOS ALIMENTOS; May 21-25, 2018; Palacio de Convenciones; La Habana, Cuba; Oral Presentation; SIMPOSIO ALIMENTACI�N Y SALUD; Title: "Developing insects for food, feed, pharma and other valuable Applications"; (Abstract: CLICK HERE); Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Room: Sala 3; May 22, 2018; 11:30-11:45 AM.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: IFT 2018; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; July 15-18, "Hot Topics Session: Technological Advances and New Insights into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry from Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: KoSFoST International Symposium and Annual Meeting; June 26-28, 2019; Songdo Convensia; Incheon, South Korea; PAID INVITED Oral Presentation; Title: "Developing Insects as a Sustainable Resource for Food, Feed, Pharma and Other Valuable Applications"; in the section on "Insect-Based Food"; Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Wednesday, June 26, 2019; 3:45-5:45 PM.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: IFT 2019; Speaker; Aaron T. Dossey; June 25, 2019, "State of the Industry: Developing Insects as Food, Feed, Pharma and Other Valuable Applications" in the Symposium "Technological Advances and New Insights Into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry From Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA.


Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:The goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021 (Digitaljournal.com, 2016). Other reports indicate the current market at $423 million, growing to $722 million by 2024 (Marketwatch, 2016). To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects, are offered by companies. Crickets have been the primary focus of the market. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect based food industry must innovate and diversify. Mealworms have potential advantages over crickets. They tend to be more disease resistant, can be produced in smaller spaces at higher density and may be more amenable to mechanized automated farming. Additionally, developing and evaluating protein extracts made from mealworms and crickets will aid food companies in their goal to add higher levels of insect protein to products without adding fat calories or negatively affecting product quality. Changes/Problems: As with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic set this project back for us and continues to inhibit progress in commercializing technology as well as making desired research progress. However, we are happy that within the past year (2021-2022) we have re-vamped things and are very well back on track toward refining our innovations and pursuing commercial opportunities, particularly recently (late 2022). The problems we encountered during the project were 2 fold: 1) most importantly, difficulty in finding affordable access to small/pilot scale food processing equipment (in our case, small scaleextruders for puffed extruded snacks, cereals, pastas and related products using small amounts of ingredient feasible to produce for this type of project, and particular difficulty finding access to small/pilot scale equipment for defatting of insect protein or producing extracts/isolates) and 2) unreliable subcontractors (especially at Universities). These 2 problems are very common to startups like ours and we have experienced them before. It would be very helpful to the mission of the SBIR program if the government could help startups/small businesses access/purchase small/pilot scale equipment and facilities via allowing us to buy our own equipment and facilities or investing in more experimental food processing, chemistry and other types of small/pilot scale contract service facilities available to us at affordable rates for an SBIR Phase I or II project. Our original sub-contractor for the defatting and protein precipitation experiments was at Texas A&M University. They were very slow and did nothing for several months, and would not provide us with data or reports. We finally cancelled our contract with them and replaced them with the Center for Crops Utilization Research in the Food Science Department at Iowa State University. We have had no troubles on a technical level - we simply needed to find reliable access to the equipment and facilities required for our work at affordable rates. Our research, experiments and technical results have been fantastic, very fruitful, useful and valuable. We are happy with our experiments and we made very useful discoveries on how to process farm raised insects into defatted protein, protein extract and insect oil byproduct. We are very excited about the commercial implications of our results from the project and are working on and following up with opportunities to bring these innovations to market soon. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This project, while delayed, has been quite successful and we have made some very valuable and helpful discoveries. Our work has also generated a lot of public interest and several publications and presentations at prestigious conferences, etc. The following lists our discoveries, successes, achievements, publications and presentations: Discoveries and Successes: We have discovered that ethanol out-performs hexane and acetone by far for defatting of insect powders. This is excellent news because ethanol tends to be safer than the other solvents for use in a food environment and customers/food industry/the public are less concerned about the safety of ethanol than other solvents so this could be a good selling point in our future commercialization of defatted insect material and insect protein extracts. Additionally, if we choose to seek organic status for these extracts, ethanol is more likely to be approved as a solvent for organic status than the others. Determined that temperature does not have a significant effect on solvent defatting of insect material, and defatting can be done rapidly without long incubations or treatments. Determined that defatting prior to protein precipitation for insect materials is the best approach, not the reverse. Discovered that sifting of course spray dried insect material (keeping the chitin fragments large) is an excellent way to separate chitin from insect protein, and defatting before sifting improves the separation. In general via defatting and sifting alone (starting with spray dried insect powder) we can achieve an insect protein product with vastly reduced chitin and 80-90% protein content by dry weight. This product alone is a significant win and could be very valuable commercially for the food and animal feed industries. Alkaline precipitation of defatted insect powder followed by acid precipitation of the alkaline soluble fraction produces at least 3 protein and 1 fat/oil product. One of the protein precipitates is approximately 10-15% of the total insect material (by dry weight) and about 100% pure protein. Browning inhibitors (anti-oxidants) when blended with raw insect slurry early in processing prior to downstream defatting and/or protein precipitation can help reduce or mitigate additional browning to yield a lighter colored or possibly even nearly white insect protein extract product. The shelf-stability of spray dried jet milled mealworm powder seems to be at least slightly better than that of cricket powder, especially based on analytical chemistry markers of rancidity even though it is higher in fat. This is a very exciting result from a major part of this project (mealworm powder shelf-life) as it demonstrates that mealworm powder remains a good quality ingredient for a significant amount of time and its fat is stable. This, on top of the other benefits of mealworms over crickets (easier to rear and process, easier to harvest and handle, easier to farm with lower mortality and disease issues, dry rearing conditions, high rearing density and other benefits), shows that mealworm powder could out-perform cricket powder as a major commodity. Both mealworm and cricket powders add a meat-like flavor profile to texturized plant protein. While they do not improve the texture, they do not detract from it at moderate levels of incorporation. Thus these insect powders could be a valuable way for the food industry to add sustainable nutrition and meat-like flavor to these sort of meat alternative products.

Publications


    Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21

    Outputs
    Target Audience:The goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021 (Digitaljournal.com, 2016). Other reports indicate the current market at $423 million, growing to $722 million by 2024 (Marketwatch, 2016). To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects, are offered by companies. Crickets have been the primary focus of the market. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect based food industry must innovate and diversify. Mealworms have potential advantages over crickets. They tend to be more disease resistant, can be produced in smaller spaces at higher density and may be more amenable to mechanized automated farming. Additionally, developing and evaluating protein extracts made from mealworms and crickets will aid food companies in their goal to add higher levels of insect protein to products without adding fat calories or negatively affecting product quality. Changes/Problems: As with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic set this project back for us and continues to inhibit progress in commercializing technology as well as making desired research progress. The problems we encountered during the project were 2 fold: 1) most importantly, difficulty in finding affordable access to small/pilot scale food processing equipment (in our case, small scale extruders for puffed extruded snacks, cereals, pastas and related products using small amounts of ingredient feasible to produce for this type of project, and particular difficulty finding access to small/pilot scale equipment for defatting of insect protein or producing extracts/isolates) and 2) unreliable subcontractors (especially at Universities). These 2 problems are very common to startups like ours and we have experienced them before. It would be very helpful to the mission of the SBIR program if the government could help startups/small businesses access/purchase small/pilot scale equipment and facilities via allowing us to buy our own equipment and facilities or investing in more experimental food processing, chemistry and other types of small/pilot scale contract service facilities available to us at affordable rates for an SBIR Phase I or II project. Our original sub-contractor for the defatting and protein precipitation experiments was at Texas A&M University. They were very slow and did nothing for several months, and would not provide us with data or reports. We finally cancelled our contract with them and replaced them with the Center for Crops Utilization Research in the Food Science Department at Iowa State University. We have had no troubles on a technical level - we simply needed to find reliable access to the equipment and facilities required for our work at affordable rates. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue execution of objectives

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? This project, while delayed, has been quite successful and we have made some very valuable and helpful discoveries. Our work has also generated a lot of public interest and several publications and presentations at prestigious conferences, etc. The following lists our discoveries, successes, achievements, publications and presentations: Discoveries and Successes: We have discovered that ethanol out-performs hexane and acetone by far for defatting of insect powders. This is excellent news because ethanol tends to be safer than the other solvents for use in a food environment and customers/food industry/the public are less concerned about the safety of ethanol than other solvents so this could be a good selling point in our future commercialization of defatted insect material and insect protein extracts. Additionally, if we choose to seek organic status for these extracts, ethanol is more likely to be approved as a solvent for organic status than the others. Determined that temperature does not have a significant effect on solvent defatting of insect material, and defatting can be done rapidly without long incubations or treatments. Determined that defatting prior to protein precipitation for insect materials is the best approach, not the reverse. Discovered that sifting of course spray dried insect material (keeping the chitin fragments large) is an excellent way to separate chitin from insect protein, and defatting before sifting improves the separation. In general via defatting and sifting alone (starting with spray dried insect powder) we can achieve an insect protein product with vastly reduced chitin and 80-90% protein content by dry weight. This product alone is a significant win and could be very valuable commercially for the food and animal feed industries. Alkaline precipitation of defatted insect powder followed by acid precipitation of the alkaline soluble fraction produces at least 3 protein and 1 fat/oil product. One of the protein precipitates is approximately 10-15% of the total insect material (by dry weight) and about 100% pure protein. Browning inhibitors (anti-oxidants) when blended with raw insect slurry early in processing prior to downstream defatting and/or protein precipitation can help reduce or mitigate additional browning to yield a lighter colored or possibly even nearly white insect protein extract product. The shelf-stability of spray dried jet milled mealworm powder seems to be at least slightly better than that of cricket powder, especially based on analytical chemistry markers of rancidity even though it is higher in fat. This is a very exciting result from a major part of this project (mealworm powder shelf-life) as it demonstrates that mealworm powder remains a good quality ingredient for a significant amount of time and its fat is stable. This, on top of the other benefits of mealworms over crickets (easier to rear and process, easier to harvest and handle, easier to farm with lower mortality and disease issues, dry rearing conditions, high rearing density and other benefits), shows that mealworm powder could out-perform cricket powder as a major commodity. Both mealworm and cricket powders add a meat-like flavor profile to texturized plant protein. While they do not improve the texture, they do not detract from it at moderate levels of incorporation. Thus these insect powders could be a valuable way for the food industry to add sustainable nutrition and meat-like flavor to these sort of meat alternative products.

    Publications


      Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20

      Outputs
      Target Audience:The goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021 (Digitaljournal.com, 2016). Other reports indicate the current market at $423 million, growing to $722 million by 2024 (Marketwatch, 2016). To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects, are offered by companies. Crickets have been the primary focus of the market. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect based food industry must innovate and diversify. Mealworms have potential advantages over crickets. They tend to be more disease resistant, can be produced in smaller spaces at higher density and may be more amenable to mechanized automated farming. Additionally, developing and evaluating protein extracts made from mealworms and crickets will aid food companies in their goal to add higher levels of insect protein to products without adding fat calories or negatively affecting product quality. Changes/Problems: As with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic set this project back for us and continues to inhibit progress in commercializing technology as well as making desired research progress. The problems we encountered during the project were 2 fold: 1) most importantly, difficulty in finding affordable access to small/pilot scale food processing equipment (in our case, small scale extruders for puffed extruded snacks, cereals, pastas and related products using small amounts of ingredient feasible to produce for this type of project, and particular difficulty finding access to small/pilot scale equipment for defatting of insect protein or producing extracts/isolates) and 2) unreliable subcontractors (especially at Universities). These 2 problems are very common to startups like ours and we have experienced them before. It would be very helpful to the mission of the SBIR program if the government could help startups/small businesses access/purchase small/pilot scale equipment and facilities via allowing us to buy our own equipment and facilities or investing in more experimental food processing, chemistry and other types of small/pilot scale contract service facilities available to us at affordable rates for an SBIR Phase I or II project. Our original sub-contractor for the defatting and protein precipitation experiments was at Texas A&M University. They were very slow and did nothing for several months, and would not provide us with data or reports. We finally cancelled our contract with them and replaced them with the Center for Crops Utilization Research in the Food Science Department at Iowa State University. We have had no troubles on a technical level - we simply needed to find reliable access to the equipment and facilities required for our work at affordable rates. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? 2020: Oppert, B., Perkin, L.C., Lorenzen, M. and Dossey, A.T. Transcriptome analysis of life stages of the house cricket, Acheta domesticus, to improve insect crop production. (2020). Scientific Reports. 10, 3471. Fiebelkorn; Nils Puchert; Aaron T. Dossey. An Exercise on Data-Based Decision Making: Comparing the Sustainability of Meat & Edible Insects. (2020) The American Biology Teacher. 82 (8): Volume 82, Issue 8. pp. 522-528. Juan Alfredo Morales-Ramos, Maria Guadalupe Rojas, Aaron T. Dossey and Mark Berhow, Self-selection of food ingredients and agricultural by-products by the house cricket, Acheta domesticus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae): A holistic approach to develop optimized diets, (2020) PLOS ONE, 15(1): e0227400. Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); General Meeting; February 23 - February 26, 2020; JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort; Marco Island, FL.; Selected as a "Flash Talk"; Monday, February 24, 2020; Title: "Developing Genetic Resources and Engineering Insects for Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Clausa Ballroom; 11:20 AM - 11:40 AM (mine was the last talk of the set). Plant & Animal Genomics Conference (PAG); Annual Conference; January 11- 15, 2020; Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA; Title: "W416 Developing Insects for Food, Feed and Bioproduction: White-Eye Marker for CRISPR/Cas9 in Crickets and Mealworms"; in the workshop "Farmed Insects to Feed Future Populations". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Room: Royal Palm Salon 3-4; Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020; 2:40 PM. Plant & Animal Genomics Conference (PAG); Annual Conference; January 11- 15, 2020; Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA; Title: " W413 Workshop Introduction", in the workshop "Farmed Insects to Feed Future Populations". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Room: Royal Palm Salon 3-4; Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020; 1:30 PM. Plant & Animal Genomics Conference (PAG); Annual Conference; January 11- 15, 2020; Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA; Title: " W058 The ABCs of using CRISPR in Non-Model Organisms", in the workshop "Application of New Genomic Tools and Techniques in Arthropods". Dr. Clay Fu-Chyun, Chu and Dr. Aaron T. Dossey. Room: Royal Palm Salon 1-2; Saturday, Jan 11, 2020, 7:35 PM. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue execution of our objectives.

      Impacts
      What was accomplished under these goals? This project, while delayed, has been quite successful and we have made some very valuable and helpful discoveries. Our work has also generated a lot of public interest and several publications and presentations at prestigious conferences, etc. The following lists our discoveries, successes, achievements, publications and presentations: ?Discoveries and Successes: We have discovered that ethanol out-performs hexane and acetone by far for defatting of insect powders. This is excellent news because ethanol tends to be safer than the other solvents for use in a food environment and customers/food industry/the public are less concerned about the safety of ethanol than other solvents so this could be a good selling point in our future commercialization of defatted insect material and insect protein extracts. Additionally, if we choose to seek organic status for these extracts, ethanol is more likely to be approved as a solvent for organic status than the others. Determined that temperature does not have a significant effect on solvent defatting of insect material, and defatting can be done rapidly without long incubations or treatments. Determined that defatting prior to protein precipitation for insect materials is the best approach, not the reverse. Discovered that sifting of course spray dried insect material (keeping the chitin fragments large) is an excellent way to separate chitin from insect protein, and defatting before sifting improves the separation. In general via defatting and sifting alone (starting with spray dried insect powder) we can achieve an insect protein product with vastly reduced chitin and 80-90% protein content by dry weight. This product alone is a significant win and could be very valuable commercially for the food and animal feed industries. Alkaline precipitation of defatted insect powder followed by acid precipitation of the alkaline soluble fraction produces at least 3 protein and 1 fat/oil product. One of the protein precipitates is approximately 10-15% of the total insect material (by dry weight) and about 100% pure protein. Browning inhibitors (anti-oxidants) when blended with raw insect slurry early in processing prior to downstream defatting and/or protein precipitation can help reduce or mitigate additional browning to yield a lighter colored or possibly even nearly white insect protein extract product. The shelf-stability of spray dried jet milled mealworm powder seems to be at least slightly better than that of cricket powder, especially based on analytical chemistry markers of rancidity even though it is higher in fat. This is a very exciting result from a major part of this project (mealworm powder shelf-life) as it demonstrates that mealworm powder remains a good quality ingredient for a significant amount of time and its fat is stable. This, on top of the other benefits of mealworms over crickets (easier to rear and process, easier to harvest and handle, easier to farm with lower mortality and disease issues, dry rearing conditions, high rearing density and other benefits), shows that mealworm powder could out-perform cricket powder as a major commodity. Both mealworm and cricket powders add a meat-like flavor profile to texturized plant protein. While they do not improve the texture, they do not detract from it at moderate levels of incorporation. Thus these insect powders could be a valuable way for the food industry to add sustainable nutrition and meat-like flavor to these sort of meat alternative products.

      Publications


        Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19

        Outputs
        Target Audience:The goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021 (Digitaljournal.com, 2016). Other reports indicate the current market at $423 million, growing to $722 million by 2024 (Marketwatch, 2016). To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects, are offered by companies. Crickets have been the primary focus of the market. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect based food industry must innovate and diversify. Mealworms have potential advantages over crickets. They tend to be more disease resistant, can be produced in smaller spaces at higher density and may be more amenable to mechanized automated farming. Additionally, developing and evaluating protein extracts made from mealworms and crickets will aid food companies in their goal to add higher levels of insect protein to products without adding fat calories or negatively affecting product quality. Changes/Problems:The problem we have encountered so far has been simply with our original sub-contractor for the defatting and protein precipitation experiments at Texas A&M University. They were very slow and did nothing for several months, and would not provide us with data or reports. We finally cancelled our contract with them and replaced them with the Center for Crops Utilization Research in the Food Science Department at Iowa State University. They are conducting and will conduct exactly the same work proposed for Texas A&M in the original proposal. eg: The scope of the research will not be changed as a result of this. We have had no troubles on a technical level - we simply need more time due to the delays of Texas A&M and time it took to switch sub-contractors. Our research, experiments and technical results have been fantastic, very fruitful, useful and valuable. Now experiments are working fantastically and we are making very useful discoveries on how to process farm raised insects into defatted protein, protein extract and insect oil byproduct. We anticipate very exciting results from the project once completed with the requested no-cost extension. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Publications, Presentations and Other Publicized Work Products (no max pages). Selected Subset of Presentations and Abstracts: 2018: 1) Food science conference (Havana, Cuba, 2018); CICTA14 - 2018 XIV CONFERENCIA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE CIENCIA Y TECNOLOGÍA DE LOS ALIMENTOS; May 21-25, 2018; Palacio de Convenciones; La Habana, Cuba; Oral Presentation; SIMPOSIO ALIMENTACIÓN Y SALUD; Title: "Developing insects for food, feed, pharma and other valuable Applications"; (Abstract: CLICK HERE); Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Room: Sala 3; May 22, 2018; 11:30-11:45 AM. 2) IFT 2018; Speaker; Aaron T. Dossey; July 15-18, "Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients: Farming, Processing, and Genetics" in the Symposium "Hot Topics Session: Technological Advances and New Insights into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry from Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. 3) IFT 2018; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; July 15-18, "Hot Topics Session: Technological Advances and New Insights into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry from Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. 2019: 1) KoSFoST International Symposium and Annual Meeting; June 26-28, 2019; Songdo Convensia; Incheon, South Korea; PAID INVITED Oral Presentation; Title: "Developing Insects as a Sustainable Resource for Food, Feed, Pharma and Other Valuable Applications"; in the section on "Insect-Based Food"; Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Wednesday, June 26, 2019; 3:45-5:45 PM. 2) UNC Clean Tech Summit; Annual Conference; February 28 - March 1, 2019; UNC Friday Center (University of North Carolina); Chapel Hill, NC, USA; PAID INVITED Expert Panel Title: "Alternative Proteins"; Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Room: Bellflower; Thursday, February 28, 2019; 1:30-2:45 PM. 3) Buddhi Lamsal, Hui Wang, Praphan Pinsirodom, and Aaron T. Dossey. Applications of Insect?Derived Protein Ingredients in Food and Feed Industry, (2019). Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society (JAOCS). Volume 96, Issue 2, February 2019, Pages 105-123. 4) IFT 2019; Speaker; Aaron T. Dossey; June 25, 2019, "State of the Industry: Developing Insects as Food, Feed, Pharma and Other Valuable Applications" in the Symposium "Technological Advances and New Insights Into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry From Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. 5) IFT 2019; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; June 2-5, 2019, "Technological Advances and New Insights Into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry From Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA. 6) IFT 2019; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; June 2-5, 2019, "Food Safety and Regulation of Insect Based Food"; Chicago, IL, USA. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue execution on our objectives.

        Impacts
        What was accomplished under these goals? To date this project, while delayed, has been quite successful and we have made some very valuable and helpful discoveries. Our work has also generated a lot of public interest and several publications and presentations at prestigious conferences, etc. The following lists our discoveries, successes, achievements, publications and presentations to date: Discoveries and Successes: 1) We have discovered that ethanol out-performs hexane and acetone by far for defatting of insect powders. This is excellent news because ethanol tends to be safer than the other solvents for use in a food environment and customers/food industry/the public are less concerned about the safety of ethanol than other solvents so this could be a good selling point in our future commercialization of defatted insect material and insect protein extracts. Additionally, if we choose to seek organic status for these extracts, ethanol is more likely to be approved as a solvent for organic status than the others. 2) Determined that temperature does not have a significant effect on solvent defatting of insect material, and defatting can be done rapidly without long incubations or treatments. 3) Determined that defatting prior to protein precipitation for insect materials is the best approach, not the reverse. 4) Discovered that sifting of course spray dried insect material (keeping the chitin fragments large) is an excellent way to separate chitin from insect protein, and defatting before sifting improves the separation. 5) In general via defatting and sifting alone (starting with spray dried insect powder) we can achieve an insect protein product with vastly reduced chitin and 80-90% protein content by dry weight. This product alone is a significant win and could be very valuable commercially for the food and animal feed industries. 6) Alkaline precipitation of defatted insect powder followed by acid precipitation of the alkaline soluble fraction produces at least 3 protein and 1 fat/oil product. One of the protein precipitates is approximately 10-15% of the total insect material (by dry weight) and about 100% pure protein. 7) Browning inhibitors (anti-oxidants) when blended with raw insect slurry early in processing prior to downstream defatting and/or protein precipitation can help reduce or mitigate additional browning to yield a lighter colored or possibly even nearly white insect protein extract product.

        Publications

        • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Food science conference (Havana, Cuba, 2018); CICTA14 - 2018 XIV CONFERENCIA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE CIENCIA Y TECNOLOG�A DE LOS ALIMENTOS; May 21-25, 2018; Palacio de Convenciones; La Habana, Cuba; Oral Presentation; SIMPOSIO ALIMENTACI�N Y SALUD; Title: "Developing insects for food, feed, pharma and other valuable Applications"; (Abstract: CLICK HERE); Dr. Aaron T. Dossey; Room: Sala 3; May 22, 2018; 11:30-11:45 AM.
        • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: IFT 2018; Organizer and Moderator for Symposium; Aaron T. Dossey; July 15-18, "Hot Topics Session: Technological Advances and New Insights into the Emerging Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients Industry from Farm to Table"; Chicago, IL, USA.