Innovation for
the environment
R&D
Insects are our main technology and they are at the centre of our researches aiming at replicating their natural life-cycle and boosting their capability to convert different substrates.
Olive pomace
Olive pomace retains a significant amount of residual oil and can be a source of valuable compounds, mainly triterpenic acids (maslinic acid, oleanolic) and triterpene dialcohols (erythrodiol, and uvaol), so it could be a very interesting component of our larvae diet to produce high-value derivatives.
Wine and other alcoholic waste
Conventional treatments of winery waste are becoming increasingly expensive, demanding significant amounts of effort, resources and energy for safe waste discharge; valorisation of winery waste is now possible when introducing the insect bioconversion.
Contaminated biomasses
The feasible application of insect farming is not limited to the “feed” use, but is open to other relevant industries as the chemical one.
So our larve could have a significant role in converting contaminated biomasses or soils.
Hermetia illucens
The Soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) (BSF) is the species that has been studied during the last 5 years and on which the production process is based. The latter was infact designed and created for its breeding, and at the moment, it is BEF’s core business
Musca domestica
The House fly (Musca domestica) is a promising species, whose larvae take half the time to reach the maximum development and require a lower energy consumption. Currently, we are in an advanced stage in the research.
Tenebrio molitor
The yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) is a promising type of beetle, especially because of the recent approval as a species suitable for the Food market. We are in a production phase that allows us to have access to data from international fundamental research
Bombix mori
The silkworm (Bombix mori) is a lepidopteran which has been used for silk production in the fashion and textile industry; in the last few years there has been growing interest in the promising quality of its flour, rich of long-chain fatty acids
Acheta domesticus
The house cricket (Acheta domesticus) is an orthopterous species, very promising for the reptile and bird food industry, as well as for the production of human use flour. BEF started a collaboration in order to adapt the machinery for cricket breeding
Natural selection
Natural genetic selection of larvae is one of the most fascinating fields of research and could lead us to select the key factors to have different insect populations for each substrate in order to make the bioconversion even more efficient.
Genetic improvements
The larvae’s digestive system is the most important element to analyse yet, for example to model the larvae midgut or their intestinal microbiota in order to improve their bioconversion performances or to protect them from pathogens and parasites reducing the biohazard.
