How to integrate nutritional geometry principles to optimize insect diets: A new framework for insect rearing using the intake target concept

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

8:41 AM – 8:59 AM MST

Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 131 A, PCC

Presenting Author(s)

Marion Le Gall (she/her/hers)

Supervisory Entomologist
M3 Agriculture Technologies
Tempe, Arizona

Co-Author(s)

Carolyn Huynh (she/her/hers)

BioScience Technician
M3 Agriculture Technologies
Mesa, Arizona
AC

Allen Cohen

North Carolina State University
NM

Nathan Moses-Gonzales

Chief Executive Officer
M3 Agriculture Technologies
Omak, Washington

Humans have reared insects for thousands of years. Despite this long-standing relationship, the first artificial insect diet was not developed until the beginning of the 20th century. Today, insects are reared in large amounts for the release of biological control agents, as feed, or to mate with wild individuals for the sterile insect technique. Diet formulation often involves changing one ingredient at a time, a tedious and labor-intensive approach that does not always yield optimal results because it fails to acknowledge the integrative nature of nutrition. Here, we propose a framework where a cafeteria experiment precedes the classic no-choice assays to narrow down the optimal blend of macro-nutrients necessary for an organism. In other words, we incorporate the concept of "intake target" and the geometry of nutritional decisions to develop artificial diets using natural ingredients that are more cost-effective than the synthetic diets typically used with the Geometric Framework for Nutrition.