Knowledge gaps in feeding physiology, microbiome and behaviour of insects for food and feed: overcoming barriers to advancing insect-rearing through interdisciplinarity, standardisation, and emerging technologies

Abstract The mass rearing of insects for food and feed has emerged as a promising solution to food insecurity, protein production and waste valorisation. While outcomes such as growth and feed conversion efficiency have been examined for mass reared insects, the mechanisms underpinning these outcomes are poorly understood. To optimise the rearing of insects for food and feed and build towards efficient, scalable and productive systems, we must first therefore understand the mechanisms driving productivity and efficiency in common target species. By integrating emerging technologies across disciplines, we can begin to characterise these mechanisms to guide the optimisation of robust and standardised systems for efficient and scalable food and feed production. In this article, we explore opportunities for integrated and interdisciplinary thinking, and the use of emerging technologies to characterise the feeding physiology, digestive processes, microbiome-driven nutritional effects and behavioural regulation of insects commonly used for food and feed. We identify areas of synergy and interaction across research domains and provide a roadmap and call to action to catalyse uptake of these ideas across research and practice. By realising interdisciplinary integration and implementation of emerging technologies, we believe that an urgently required deeper mechanistic understanding of feeding-related processes is possible. This can, in turn, enable precision nutrition, improve system robustness and ensure consistent product quality.