Due to the expected growth of the world population to about 9 billion people by 2050 and changes in global eating habits, the supply of protein for humans and animals will be extremely critical and requires the exploitation of alternative protein sources.

Since about 2010, edible insects have been recognized for the first time as a valuable source of protein for food and feed production, and since then, insects and products derived thereof have entered the European market. Eating insects may have some advantages as they contain more protein in percentage of their total body mass than pigs, cattle or chickens and a greater percentage of their body mass is edible (about 80 %, compared to only about 40 % for cattle). Insects are able to convert protein ingested from feed very efficiently into endogenous protein, reproduce very quickly and their rearing is considerably less demanding compared to that of conventional livestock.  

The production of protein rich flour from insects for incorporation into foods provides an opportunity, for insect protein to achieve widespread exploitation directly in human diets in the medium to long term. On the one hand, we apply wet extraction techniques inspired by conventional plant protein extraction routes to separate and purify the major insect components - chitin, fat, and protein including common unit operations as cell disruption, defatting, aqueous protein solubilisation, mechanical separation of insoluble fractions, protein precipitation and drying. Apart from that our research aims at employing individual and combined effects of selected novel pretreatment technologies (pulsed electric fields, ultrasound, isostatic high pressure, microwave, cold plasma) and innovative process combinations (plasma drying) for improving recoveries of key macromolecule from insect matrices and apply a range of hi-tech analytical methods to characterise the recovered fractions and to assess the effects and effectiveness of the innovative pretreament methods.