Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25
Outputs
Target Audience:Target audience includes food and pet food processors, equipment manufacturers, insect farmers, and academic researchers. The lessons learned from this study will help food processors develop nutritious products using insect proteins. Insect farmers can develop farming practices that provide insect meal for maximum extraction of proteins.Providers of novel food processing technologies will be able to design and produce cost-effective high-pressure equipment for insect protein extraction. Academic researchers can further explore the benefits of insect proteins in both human and pet food applications. Changes/Problems:Principal Investigator Dr. Balasubramaniam is leaving from The Ohio State University effective 08/31/2025. He has accepted an edowed professorship in food processingat University of Georgia effective 09/01/2025. Dr. Simons is currently a Co-PD on this project at Ohio State and is able and prepared to assume the role of PI upon Dr. Balasubramaniam's departure. Dr. Balasubramaniam, from UGA will assume Co-PI role in the project and continue oversee advanced food processing aspects of the project. Investigators will work with Ohio State Univeristy Sponsored Program Office to officially communicate above changes to USDA NIFA for their review and approval. This proposed change has minimal technical impact on the proposed project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This is the first year of the project. Investigators successfully identified and hired graduate student researchers with relevant background. Senior faculty researchers trained new graduate students on standardized protocols for the physico-chemical and functional characterization of insect proteins. This ensured consistency in analytical procedures and enabled reliable comparative analysis across both Ohio State University and URV. Training was delivered through video teleconferencing platforms . A comprehensive set of support materials--including detailed analytical protocols and visual guides demonstrating key techniques--was shared with all team members to reinforce learning and promote uniformity in experimental methods. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During the first year, Ohio State University andUniversitat Rovira i Virgili met every month using Zoom/Team video conference platform to review project progress and coordinate next month research activities. OSU and URV researchers shared raw and treated samples using international shipment methods. This way, both the teams able to conduct research in a synergistic way. The teams received raw material samples from various international insect farm sources. Research team presented research results at nonthermal processing workshop. Peer-review manuscript has been prepared and submitted. Additional peer-review manuscripts are prepared for submission. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to work on the various tasks originally proposed for year 2. These tasks are briefly summarized below. Tak Consumer acceptance surveys:we will recruit 200 US participants through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and assess their acceptance of foods formulated with insect proteins using a 7-point Likert scale (1=Never consume to 7=Exclusively consume) before and after providing subjects with information regarding the positive benefits associated with using insect protein.The survey will be developed by our team in consultation with industry partners to ensure that the outcomes provide the insights needed to optimize the market potential and value chain of insect proteins. Subsequently, after analyzing the results of the survey, we will conduct a specific consumer focus group during year 3 to gain additional perspectives from consumers. The OSU Institutional Review Board will approve all protocols. The results of the consumer surveys will be used to finetune 3-D printing studies and related efforts. TaskDevelopment of Optical Sensors for Quality Screening:We will collect spectral data from insect powders, lipid, and protein fractions, as well as doughs and baked 3D-printed snacks using OSU's handheld NIR sensorWe will develop and optimize chemometric algorithms to convert optical spectroscopy data into nutrient levels for each insect powder. Task:Food product design by 3D printingWe will develop a snack recipe using chickpea flour, water, extra virgin olive oil, curry powder, and salt, enhanced with varying concentrations (5% to 25%) of insect ingredients. Two portable 3D food printers, Focus byFlow and Foodini , will be utilized to print both the control dough and doughs enriched with protein concentrates. Printing parameters such as print speed, nozzle size, and flow rate will be selected based on the chosen shape (e.g., Voronoi circle) and the type of printer. In addition to above tasks, our team will prepare additional manuscripts for peer-review publications from year 1 study.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Raw material characterization. The research work was carried out by The Ohio State University,1Universitat Rovira i Virgilia and industry collaborators. Black soldier fly (BSF) samples were obtained from Brown Foods Biotech (Spain) and Infood Protein (Chile). Spanish samples were used for defatting and protein extraction, while Chilean samples supported development of predictive models using NIR sensors. All samples were analyzed for total protein (Kjeldahl method), showing ~7.1%. Defatted samples had a higher protein content of 9.78% and a Kp factor of 4.81. Additional analyses included fat content, fatty acid profile, moisture, water activity, and buffer capacity. BSF powder's pH buffering was tested in NaOH solutions (0.05-0.25 M). Higher concentrations maintained more stable alkaline pH levels. Protein extraction was highest with 0.25 M NaOH (~35 mg/mL), though its strong alkalinity raises food safety concerns. To improve solubility under milder conditions, NaCl (0.05-0.15 M) was added. A mix of 0.05 M NaOH and 0.05 M NaCl improved protein yield by 63.08% over water alone. SDS-PAGE revealed increased protein concentration and molecular weight at higher pH and NaCl levels. Techno-functional properties (emulsifying, foaming) showed promise for food/feed applications. Defatting using combined high pressure and carbondioxide process.Various conditions of pressure (100-300 bar), temperature (40-65 °C), and time (30-90 min) were tested to optimize supercritical CO? (SC-CO?) extraction for insect powder defatting. A treatment at 50°C, 150 bar, and 75 min achieved 15% fat removal, though overall yields remained below 40%. Due to this, hexane-based solvent extraction continued, achieving ~48% fat removal in one cycle. A water-based method yielded ≤30%, making it unsuitable for scale-up. To improve efficiency, a high pressure based carbondioxide extraction process is being developedusing a custom vessel incorporating dry ice for controlled CO? release. Solvent systems tested included hexane alone and hexane-water mixtures (1:1, 1:3). The best result--55.60 ± 3.95% fat removal--was obtained with a 1:1 hexane-water mix under SC-CO? conditions. In contrast, HPP without SC-CO? yielded only 25.4%. Residual fat content was assessed via Soxhlet extraction, while FT-MIR spectroscopy (notably the 1740 cm?¹ lipid band) confirmed fat reduction. Fatty acid profiles were analyzed using GC-FID. The integrated HPP and SC-CO? approach significantly improved extraction efficiency and reduced processing time, showing strong potential for sustainable, scalable insect defatting. High pressure based protein extraction:We applied high-pressure processing (HPP) at 200 MPa to insect powder previously defatted with organic solvents to enhance protein extraction. Initial tests used NaOH-adjusted solutions at various pH levels (7.0-12.5) with 0.15 M NaCl but faced pH instability due to the BSF powder's high buffering capacity. To improve consistency, we shifted to fixed NaOH concentrations (0.05-0.25 M) combined with NaCl (0.05, 0.1, and 0.15 M), monitoring pH throughout. In one effective condition--0.05 M NaOH with 0.05 M NaCl--protein extraction reached 63%, increasing to 79% after HPP. This mixture maintained a stable pH of ~9.0 before and after treatment. Development of optical sensors for screening quality of raw insect sample qualityA total of 250 black soldier fly (BSF) samples reared on various organic waste substrates were analyzed for protein (Dumas method) and fat (Soxhlet extraction). Samples, provided by Infood Protein (Chile), were also scanned using a handheld Fourier-transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy device. Approximately 1.5 g of each ground sample was compacted in a petri dish for consistent spectral acquisition. Reflectance spectra (1350-2550 nm) were collected in duplicate and preprocessed using standard techniques (absorbance conversion, SNV normalization, Savitzky-Golay derivative, and mean-centering). Partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were developed using FT-NIR spectra (X) and reference protein and fat values (Y). Data were split into calibration (70%) and validation (30%) sets, with internal validation via venetian blinds cross-validation (10 splits). Models used the full spectral range and optimized latent factors to minimize cross-validation error. The protein and lipid models showed strong performance, with correlation coefficients (RCV) of 0.98 and 0.92, and SECV values of 0.99% and 1.23%, respectively. External validation confirmed high predictive accuracy: R² of 0.97 (protein) and 0.95 (lipid), with RMSEP values of 0.52% and 0.75%. RPD and RER values exceeded quality thresholds, confirming the FT-NIR models' suitability for rapid, accurate composition analysis.
Publications
- Type:
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
Status:
Submitted
Year Published:
2025
Citation:
de Lamo Castellvi, S., Ranasinghe, M.K., Guduru, S.S., Aur�lie Ballon, Mayreli Ortiz, Carme G�ell, Montserrat Ferrando, Luis Rodriguez-Saona & V. M. Balasubramaniam. Impact of High-Pressure-Assisted Extraction of Alphitobius diaperinus and Tenebrio molitor on Protein Characteristics. Food Bioprocess Technol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11947-025-03992-6
|