Beyond Protein: How Insect-Derived Ingredients Could Change the Future of Aquafeed

Aquaculture is being asked to do something increasingly difficult: produce more seafood, with greater consistency and resilience, while using fewer resources. For many farmed species, feed is one of the largest operating costs and is often one of the first areas producers look to when addressing these challenges.

Feed manufacturers have responded with an increasingly diverse toolbox: plant proteins, algal ingredients, single-cell proteins, animal by-products, microbial ingredients and insect-derived ingredients are all being explored as components of modern aquafeed. This diversification is important because there is unlikely to be one ingredient that solves every challenge; rather the solution lies in finding the right basket of ingredients to meet different nutritional and sustainability needs.

Largely the focus has been on protein when looking at substitutions for fishmeal, a key ingredient in most aquafeeds, but one that is dependent on wild-caught marine resources and subject to price volatility. However the challenge is bigger than simply a protein replacement. When evaluating substitutions for traditional feed ingredients, new ingredients need to offer more than protein; they need to provide additional functional value to the producer and the animal.

Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), Hermetia illucens, have attracted considerable attention as an alternative ingredient for aquaculture. Insects can convert organic agricultural by-products into valuable biomass, creating an opportunity to produce protein using a different resource base than conventional marine ingredients. Research has demonstrated the potential of BSFL meal as an alternative protein source in aquafeeds, including applications involving fish and shrimp. But protein is only part of the story.

Black soldier fly larvae contain a range of biologically active components, including antimicrobial peptides, lipids such as lauric acid, and chitin. Research has increasingly investigated whether these components can influence microbial communities, gut health and immune function. This raises an important question for feed developers: can insect-derived ingredients contribute functionality to the animal beyond their nutritional value?

This was at the centre of a recent collaboration between Innovafeed and Onda. Innovafeed, an AgTech pioneer specializing in sustainable BSFL-derived ingredients, partnered with Onda to investigate whether its insect-derived ingredient could demonstrate direct antibacterial activity against pathogens relevant to aquaculture.

The study used Onda’s established in vitro pathogen screening platform to evaluate the ingredient’s activity against multiple bacterial pathogens across different concentrations.

The results were particularly interesting.

The BSFL ingredient demonstrated measurable growth inhibition against bacterial groups including Aeromonas, Flavobacterium, Photobacterium and Vibrio. The study also found significant reductions in bacterial burden for Flavobacterium psychrophilum and  Photobacterium damselae under the controlled in-vitro conditions tested.

For aquaculture, this is an important distinction. An ingredient that simply provides protein is valuable. An ingredient that can contribute protein while potentially influence the microbial environment surrounding the animal could have an entirely different role in a feed formulation, because disease remains one of the most persistent challenges facing aquaculture.

A more resilient feed strategy could help producers manage some of the biological and economic risks associated with intensive production. It could also provide feed manufacturers with more flexibility when conventional ingredients become constrained or expensive. This is where functional alternative ingredients become particularly significant.

The industry is moving toward more multifunctional formulations, feeds designed not only to meet nutritional requirements, but also to support animal health, resilience and production efficiency. Insect-derived ingredients are one part of that transition. The Innovafeed research provides an example of how alternative ingredients can be evaluated for functionality beyond their nutritional contribution.

The future of aquafeed may not be about replacing one ingredient with another, but about combining the right ingredients to deliver greater nutritional and functional value.