What are the prospects for insect farming?

Insects are the largest group in the animal kingdom, a valuable resource that human beings should make full use of, one of the important ways to solve the shortage of animal protein, a new way to ensure food supply, and the best choice to improve the environment. Insects have a short generation, rapid reproduction and high food conversion rate, and the overall biomass may exceed the total biomass of all animals on land: the insect world is extremely rich in resources and is an important renewable biological resource. insects are the last cake left to human by God.

The industrial utilization of insect breeding not only has the characteristics of emerging industries, but also has a long history. Our ancestors have used silkworms for 5000 years, and the history of beekeeping in China is at least more than 3000 years. The records of gallnut in China can be traced back to the Classic of Mountains and Seas 2000 years ago, and the use of insect wax has a history of more than 1700 years. in addition, the use of insects as food may be accompanied by the whole history of human evolution.

Because of the diversity of insect resources and functions, it can be divided into nine areas according to the application of insect culture.

Pollination insect industry

Insect pollination has always been called "the wing of agricultural production". There are many kinds of insects, mainly bees, wall bees and bear bees, while others are flies, beetles, moths and butterflies, thrips and mosquitoes. After all kinds of bees pollinate rape, cotton, melons, fruits and vegetables, they generally increase production by about 30%. When it is pollinated by alfalfa and other legume grasses, the seed yield can be increased by 1 to 2 times. It is reported that the economic benefit of bees pollinating crops is far more than dozens or even hundreds of times the total value of bee products (honey, royal jelly, beeswax, bee pollen, etc.). Some countries regard bees pollinating crops as one of the modern agricultural measures. During the crop flowering season, it has been institutionalized to rent bees to pollinate crops at a certain rent.

In recent years, China has begun to attach importance to the research and utilization of honeybee pollination for crops, and received obvious economic benefits, but the potential is far from being brought into full play, which should be vigorously promoted.

Medicinal insect industry

Medicinal insects refer to the species that use all or part of the insects as medicine directly or indirectly. Among them, the greatest economic value is Cordyceps militaris (Cordyceps militaris) produced by a variety of insects parasitized by Cordyceps, and the most famous is Cordyceps sinensis after the larvae of the genus bat moth are parasitized by Cordyceps sinensis. Other medicinal insects include Tuyuan (Trionyx sinensis), spotted wax cicada (Chicken), Bombyx mori, stiff pupa, Octopus mulberry (egg block of mantis), cicada slough, nine incense insects (Pentatomidae), Niu Niu (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae larvae) and tussah pupa. In the high-tech industry of medicinal insects, antimicrobial peptides will be extracted from fly maggots, anti-aging substances will be extracted from insect proteins, and biotechnology reagents will be prepared from insect toxins.

Edible insect industry

Edible insect resources have incomparable production and nutritional advantages over other organisms: insects have short life cycle, strong fecundity, suitable for reproduction and production in large-scale chemical plants, and have the characteristics of "five sections": saving land, water, energy, feed and labor. Insect protein content is high, as high as 50%-75%, some as high as 85%, high amino acid content and reasonable composition, insect fat is mostly soft fat and unsaturated fat, good digestibility, rich in trace elements, low sugar content. Therefore, insects will have a lot of room for development in the field of food. It is interesting that although sterol is needed in insect food, cholesterol is not absolutely necessary for some genera. In some species, especially herbivorous insects, the function of cholesterol may be accomplished by phytosterol. This phenomenon makes insect oils significantly different from other terrestrial animal fats with high cholesterol content, which may become food or animal fat resources with low cholesterol content.

A very important significance of developing insect lipids is that it is beneficial to environmental protection. Many insects can be raised by using non-edible resources and wastes as raw materials, and clean insect bodies can eventually be obtained by some means of artificial breeding. as cheap, high-quality oil and protein food resources. For example, the dung-eating insect water gadfly can digest a large amount of livestock and poultry manure such as pigs and chickens in a short time, and plays a role in purifying the surrounding environment. Housefly larvae and ants have also been used as raw materials for food and medicine. In this respect, there are many examples of turning waste into treasure and harm into benefit, so as to obtain huge comprehensive benefits.

At present, there is a lack of systematic and in-depth basic research on the development of insect lipids, especially the relative lack of data on functional lipids and other physiologically active components (including substances with strong anticancer activity) in edible insects. Industrial examples are also limited to some accumulated special lipids, such as insect wax, beeswax, cantharidin, etc., while industrial products as edible functional oils are very rare. At present, a prominent example of insect oil development is the silkworm pupa oil extracted from silkworm pupa, a by-product of silk reeling industry, by pressing or leaching (China's potential resources are about 10,000 tons / year). It has been used abroad to prepare blood cholesterol-lowering drugs, margarine, lubricants, cutting oils, washing oils, dry oils, black ointments, azelic acid and surfactant intermediates, etc. It has also been used in soap, Taikoo oil and plasticizer in China. And only a few kinds of insects such as turtle bees Mylabris foreign insects gallnut aphids and lac insects have been successfully fed or stocked on a large scale in China. What's more, the comprehensive utilization of insect lipids is a systematic project, which requires the joint efforts and cooperation of entomology, oil and plant protein engineering, pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacology, medicine, pharmaceutics and other disciplines. The author firmly believes that in the near future, with the continuous expansion of basic research and the innovation and improvement of engineering application technology, the development of insect active ingredient products and insect edible oil will break through the above bottlenecks and bring great benefits to human environment and life.

The industrial development of forage insect resources is a field with broad prospects. At present, the pollution of meat and bone meal and the decline of fish meal production provide an opportunity for the industrial development of forage insects.

1. The contents of protein in larvae, pupae and adults of Tenebrio Molitor are 51%, 57% and 61%, respectively. It is not only an excellent fine feed for livestock and poultry, but also a fine feed for scorpion, snake, centipede, soft-shelled turtle and so on. The method of artificial cultivation of Tenebrio Molitor is simple and can be cultivated by every household.

2. Maggot powder uses rice bran, wheat bran, pig manure, broken bones and red (white) sugar as raw materials to cultivate maggots quickly. Live fly maggots can be directly used to feed chickens, ducks and geese. Processed into maggot powder, which can be fed to pigs and aquatic products. The protein content of maggot powder is about 68%, which is better than that of earthworm powder. The addition of 12% to 20% in livestock and poultry feed can improve the palatability of livestock and poultry and is beneficial to eating.

3. Silkworm pupa powder the silkworm pupa left after silk drawing is silkworm pupa powder after deodorization, drying, degreasing, drying and crushing. Its protein content is more than 70%, more than high-quality imported fishmeal. It is very effective for feeding livestock and poultry, bullfrog, forest frog, shrimp and crab.

4. The dry protein content of cockroaches is 60%-70%, which has a better food-inducing effect on fish.

5. Rice locust powder makes locusts into dry powder, which has a protein content of 64%, a low fat content and an amino acid content of 16 grams per 100 grams. It is a high-quality insect feed that can replace fish meal.

6. Other insects, such as moths and beetles that fish and poultry like to eat, have high protein content. In summer and autumn, if a black light or 100 watt light bulb is installed in the fish pond or forest, 2 meters from the ground, a basin of water is placed under the lamp and a few drops of cooking oil are added to the water surface, a large number of insects such as moths and beetles can be caught every night. can be directly used to feed fish and chickens, ducks, geese and so on.