Jeffery Tomberlin, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Environmental Sustainably Through Insect Farming, doesn't deny that the industry has hit on hard times of late.
Some of the world's leading insect farming companies have filed for bankruptcy or pivoted away from insects. And many of those that remain are struggling to raise capital from increasingly skeptical investors as experts question the economic viability and even the potential environmental benefits of farming insects.
But Tomberlin believes the insect industry has yet to realize its full potential. Though inefficient and unable to compete with commodities such as fish or soy meal on a cost basis, that's only because insect production remains in its infancy. Doubling or even tripling the production capacity of any given insect farm should be readily achievable based on the insects' innate biology, he says.
“I have seen naturally produced black soldier fly larvae as small as 20 milligrams, and as big as 500 milligrams, and that is just natural population variation,” Tomberlin says. “Imagine if we can harness that and produce 500 milligram larvae.”
Other industries — poultry, for example — have seen this process play out over the decades, and insects will be no exception, Tomberlin says. But experts say that advances in genetic engineering could speed this process beyond anything seen with other livestock species to date — and could potentially allow insect production to evolve far beyond the industry's cost-cutting ambitions.
Genetic engineering with no GMOs
Just as industrial insect farming remains in its infancy, research into insect production is also relatively young — and to date, primarily focused on applied research. That is, most studies involve researchers who take some black soldier flies, do something to them, and report on the results.
In the absence of more basic research into insect physiology, Tomberlin says, most of these experiments amount essentially to “shots in the dark.” And yet many of these experiments have resulted in productivity gains of 20% or more, indicating, he says, that the industry is nowhere near its potential maximum efficiency.
Basic research could speed this cycle by helping the applied scientists better understand what experiments might result in the greatest gains. And there has been a growing interest in basic insect research in recent years, Tomberlin says.
At Indiana University Indianapolis, researchers are taking the basic science concept and going one step further — studying the black soldier fly genome itself. And their work, while still early, has suggested all sorts of new possibilities, according to Christine Picard, a professor of biology at IU Indianapolis.
Picard's lab primarily uses genomics and genetic engineering to inform selective breeding — allowing insect breeders to improve the species without creating genetically modified organisms. They start by analyzing the insect genome to identify specific genes that might be associated with a desired trait — such as improved growth or feed efficiency.
This often isn't as simple as it appears, because traits such as growth rates are rarely associated with a single gene, Picard says. But with genetic engineering, they can select one of the genes identified by their initial analysis and make a change, and then raise up the next generation of flies to determine what, exactly, that specific gene does.
“Sometimes (the difference) is really small, and you will get that answer really quick, and sometimes it is big,” she says. “And if it is something that has a large effect, now you know you can target that.”
By mating insects known to naturally possess the targeted gene, Picard continues, scientists can more quickly breed optimized strains without using the genetically modified insects in their final products.
This could have multiple benefits beyond simply increasing the pace of selective breeding, Picard says. Selective breeding by itself often comes with unintended consequences; think how commercial tomatoes, bred for shelf life and a uniform appearance, ended up less flavorful than their heirloom counterparts. Using genetic engineering to enhance the breeding process allows insect producers to identify and avoid potential tradeoffs, she says, offering the hypothetical scenario of flies that grow faster, but lay fewer eggs.
Genetic optimization need not focus exclusively on growth, either. Researchers have also proposed developing insect strains that are better adapted to cooler climates, or to feeding on hard-to-digest substrates such as rice bran or other waste streams that can't be used by other livestock species. And engineering insects that produce high-value nutrients or even drugs like insulin isn't off the table, Picard says, though that would require the kind of artificial engineering that draws consumer resistance in some countries.
Engineering economics
Tomberlin, who has conducted his own research with genetically modified insects, favors this last approach. His own work focuses on black soldier flies that have been genetically modified to produce B12, and on another strain of flies modified to digest cellulose, the indigestible fiber found in many woody plants.
“Imagine if you could produce an insect with 20% methionine,” he says. “I could charge 20-30% more for it. ... If you can create greater value, then that helps with the price point.”
Charlie Carter, the business development director for insect breeding company Beta Bugs, isn't opposed to this concept of engineering flies capable of producing high-value compounds that could increase the price of the end product. But he also worries that it could create even more hurdles for an industry already dealing with regulatory challenges and issues with public acceptance.
Using genetic engineering to inform selective breeding and speed the process of optimizing domesticated insect species holds more interest for him. Although the company has for the past four years focused on traditional, selective breeding techniques, Beta Bug's top-performing strains are already 20% more productive than the base genetics they started with, Carter says.
“We believe there is potentially massive upside in improving the genetics of the strains,” he says.
In Carter's view, if insect producers could grow more insects and produce more insect meal in the same amount of space and with the same amount of equipment, that would go a long way toward closing the gap between what it costs to rear insects, and what feed manufacturers are willing to pay for protein. And because that price gap has become the industry's biggest problem in recent years, he says, this is where Beta Bugs has chosen to focus its breeding programs: increased yields.
But Beta Bugs also believes there could be long-term benefit in engineering or breeding insects adapted to specific climates or production systems, given the high level of variability experienced by companies located in different parts of the world.
What gives him pause is the cost of the genetic engineering itself. Although Beta Bugs is interested in the potential of genetic engineering, Carter says the company ultimately hasn't pursued using the technology to enhance its own breeding programs because doing so is not cost-effective compared with traditional breeding methods.
“Creating an expensive genetic product is not what the market needs,” Carter says.
There's also valid reason to proceed with caution, Tomberlin says, given the potential for creating genetically modified insects that could become invasive if they escaped into the natural world. But while the researchers work out the remaining bugs in the genetic engineering system, Tomberlin says there's still ample room for improvements — at a much more rapid pace than seen in other livestock sectors — in insect production.
“There is value in genetic engineering, but we have barely tapped into the basic biology of the insect itself,” he says. “And if the life cycle is 30 days, we could go a lot faster.”
