Fly Larvae for Aquafeed

The Challenge

The larvae of the waste-munching Australian Black Soldier Fly (BSF) are a sustainable protein source for aquafeed.

It’s costly and time consuming for BSF farmers to measure the composition of the flies’ diet, making it difficult to optimise breeding and on-farm management.  In addition, there’s a need to measure the quality of BSF products to standardise and set specifications for value-adding.

The Solution

This project aims to develop and validate diagnostic technologies to optimise BSF larvae nutritional composition for inclusion in aquafeed.

It will develop Near Infra-Red spectroscopy (NIRs) diagnostic capability to rapidly measure on-farm BSF diet composition focusing on soy-based okra, spent brewers' grain and vegetable waste diets.

The real-time data gathered will be used for BSF breeding and management activities.

BSF products including live, whole dried and milled larvae will also be assessed using NIRs to set product categories across the supply chain.

Trials of feeding BSF aquafeed to Black Tiger Prawns will be carried out to assess the impact on prawn growth and survival.

Outcomes

• Protein content data on BSF diet waste streams and BSF farm products
• Optimised NIRs methodology for BSF on-farm use and application
• Database of the protein and anti-microbial peptide profiles of raw and processed BSF products
• Greater understanding of biological benefit of feeding black tiger prawns BSF aquafeed diet compered to standard commercial prawn diet

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Contact: projects@foodagility.com.au