Evaluating the Antibacterial Potential of Insect-Derived Protein for Aquaculture Feeds

Fishmeal remains a key ingredient in commercial aquaculture feeds due to its highly digestible protein, balanced nutrient profile, and strong palatability. However, its cost and supply can be volatile, as evidenced this year by the global fishmeal shortages, and long-term sustainability considerations continue to drive the industry to reduce dependence on marine ingredients.

Diversification of available protein sources allow feed producers to rebalance formulations while maintaining performance, and can help manage cost, improve supply chain resilience, and support sustainability objectives. When properly formulated, these ingredients can deliver additional functional benefits, such as palatant properties, or active contribution to improved health outcomes. Performance benefit claims, however, are species-specific and formulation-dependent, and require validation through industry-relevant models of testing.

Black Soldier Fly larvae (BSFL) have particular appeal as aquafeed ingredients. BSFL are small but powerful: they thrive in highly pathogenic environments, thanks to a unique metabolism that includes the secretion of antimicrobial peptides. Evidence suggests that this bioactive potential can be retained through processing, opening the door to functional benefits beyond nutrition. To investigate this, Innovafeed partnered with Onda to evaluate the antibacterial activity of its BSFL-derived ingredient against key aquaculture pathogens

The Story of Innovafeed
Innovafeed is an AgTech pioneer specializing in sustainable BSFL ingredient production. By converting agricultural byproducts into high value nutritional ingredients, Innovafeed is helping advance more sustainable feed solutions for agriculture and aquaculture.

As the aquaculture industry seeks alternatives to traditional protein sources such as fish meal and soy, Innovafeed has focused on developing insect derived ingredients that support farming performance, animal health and environmental sustainability. Beyond nutritional value, recent research suggests these ingredients may also be seen as functional ingredients, contributing among other aspects to improved gut health and immune function in a variety of aquaculture species.

The Challenge
The primary goal of this study was to determine whether Innovafeed’s BSFL ingredient demonstrated direct antibacterial activity against bacterial pathogens relevant to aquaculture production. Specifically, the study evaluated the ingredient’s ability to inhibit bacterial growth and its potential to reduce the overall bacterial burden across multiple bacterial species impacting key aquaculture sectors.

To accomplish this, the protein ingredient was screened at multiple concentrations against a panel of aquaculture pathogens using Onda’s established in-vitro testing platform.

Why Innovafeed Chose Onda
Onda maintains one of the most extensive proprietary libraries of aquaculture pathogens in the industry, enabling clients to rapidly evaluate functional ingredients against bacteria relevant to commercial production systems.

For Innovafeed, this capability offered several advantages, including access to a diverse panel of aquaculture pathogens and the ability to perform controlled in-vitro screening prior to more expensive in-vivo trials to control budgets and guide investment planning in continued research.

Onda’s scientific team worked closely with Innovafeed to identify pathogens impacting finfish, mollusk, and crustacean production, ensuring the results would be relevant to multiple aquaculture markets.

How Onda Responded
Using Onda’s extensive pathogen library, researchers designed a controlled in-vitro screening study to evaluate the antimicrobial properties of the BSFL ingredient.

The study included multiple concentrations of the test ingredient applied to a panel of bacterial pathogens associated with aquaculture disease outbreaks, wherein measurement of both growth inhibition and bacterial burden reduction were taken. The pathogen panel included representative species from several key groups of bacteria responsible for significant losses in aquaculture production systems.

By applying a standardized screening approach, Onda was able to rapidly determine whether the BSFL ingredient demonstrated direct antibacterial activity and identify which pathogens were most responsive to treatment.

Conclusion
The results demonstrated measurable antibacterial activity from the BSFL ingredient against several important aquaculture pathogens. Growth inhibition was observed against Aeromonas, Flavobacterium, Photobacterium, and Vibrio.

These bacterial groups include pathogens known to affect a wide range of aquaculture species, including finfish, bivalve mollusks, and crustaceans suggesting that the potential applications of this technology may extend well beyond a single species and represent a promising opportunity for broader use across the aquaculture industry.

In addition to inhibiting bacterial growth, the ingredient significantly reduced bacterial burden in two key pathogens under controlled laboratory conditions; Flavobaterium psychrophilum and Photobacterium damselae.

Collectively, these results highlight the potential for BSFL-derived ingredient to serve as a multifunctional aquafeed ingredient capable of reducing dependence on fishmeal, enhancing feed sustainability, supporting disease management strategies, and improving production resilience across a wide range of aquaculture species.