Extraction sustainable technologies for obtaining biocompounds from Zophoba morio fed with brewing industry by-products

• Grant number: 24/23259-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Food Science and Technology - Food Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Christianne Elisabete da Costa Rodrigues
• Grantee: Jose Vinicius Mattos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Zootecnia e Engenharia de Alimentos (FZEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Pirassununga , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Global beer consumption has grown substantially in the last five decades, reaching 150 billion liters annually. This increase has been driven by factors such as market diversification and growing demand, resulting in a greater generation of by-products like brewer's spent yeast (BSY), brewer's spent grain (BSG), and hot trub, the latter being rich in antioxidant polyphenols. In this context, an opportunity for innovation emerges by utilizing these by-products as a feed source for Zophobas morio (ZM), an edible insect authorized in the European Union, representing a sustainable alternative that can contribute to food and nutritional security. However, for brewery by-products to be used as feed for the insects, it is necessary to extract the polyphenols with hypnotic-sedative properties, mainly present in hot trub. Therefore, the present project aims to extract polyphenols from brewery industry by-products (BSY, BSG, and hot trub), use them as feed for ZMs, and extract oil and proteins from the insect's flour. The polyphenol extraction from the by-products will be performed with pressurized liquids, assisted or not by ultrasound. The insect feeding will be optimized through an experimental design that considers 0, 5, 50, and 100% replacement of the control feed. The extraction conditions for the oil contained in ZMs will be determined using the static-synthetic method with pressurized propane. Proteins will be extracted from defatted ZM flour using the conventional method of alkaline pH extraction followed by isoelectric precipitation. Additionally, Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents (NADES) will be selected with the aid of the COSMO-RS tool (Conductor-like Screening Model for Real Solvents) for protein extraction from defatted ZM flour. The project aims to reduce waste in the brewing industry, promote sustainability, and harness the biochemical characteristics of insects as sources of lipids, proteins, and bioactive compounds.