Nutrition Technologies - the blog

On 14th and 15th April we hosted two groups of students studying Applied Biotechnology at the Research Institute for Biotechnology & the Environment. Dr Trang, the Assistant Director had asked us to show the students around the project as part of the practical module of the course, explaining the different stages of insect development, the processes we go through to manage them, and to show them the insects at each stage of development.

Graduating from the lab to temporary accomodation in Dr Quoc’s net house (one of the professors teaching at RIBE) allowed us to expand production from 40cmx60cm trays to 120cmx60cm composite trays, enabling us to produce a vastly increased cohort of larvae (and therefore adults) which laid the current crop of eggs clutches. Working on a conservative estimation of 500 eggs/clutch, current Generation6 comprises approximately 1,500,000 individuals, or around 300kg of larvae (fresh weight). A large proportion of these will be allowed to pupate and turn into adults, to lay the next crop of egg clutches. The remainder will be used for nutrient testing, beginning feed trials, supplying other students & teachers within the University for research, and the first commercial sales of live larvae to petshops. See http://www.nutri-tec.co.uk/our-products for what we’re offering to customers and researchers now. 

2015 was a turbulent year, fragmented into periods of slow burn, frustration, and hold-onto-your-seats progress. Just over a year after landing at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City, the slow-down before the upcoming Tet holidays (lunar new year) has given me a chance to look back at the year and measure what progress I’ve really made against what I had planned. And what, in the coming year, needs to be done better, to make Nutri-Tec a successful enterprise in the next 3 years.

Operationally, some of the biggest hurdles have already been overcome. Establishing a colony has always been talked about in entomological circles as The First Big Challenge - capturing individuals from the wild, collecting the eggs and rearing that first generation of larvae. Without the backing and technical expertise of an established producer, this is where most of our basic lessons were learnt - largely through trial and error. Why are the larvae escaping from the growing trays? Why are they so small? why is the substrate so hot? why does it smell like that? why are there suddenly so many adult flies in the lab? Are all of these things related? A hugely stressful, and rewarding, couple of months were spent finding the answers to these questions.

As well as the operational progress, the first phase of qualitative research was completed in the first four months, setting-up a solid justification for investing in the project. Meetings with the Ministry for Agriculture, the Directorate of Fisheries, representatives from the People’s Committee and a select group of fish and shrimp farmers in the Mekong Delta, who were all supportive and enthusiastic about the project, gave me the confidence to press on with the project, in what was personally quite a difficult time.

I also spent a week in Cambodia with the global NGO WorldFish, supporting a workshop on ‘alternative feeds’ for their low-cost ponds being operated by rural communities in Stung Treng as part of the WISH Pond programme. Creating communication materials for a low literacy-audience forced me to boil down the Gigabytes of research I had done over the previous 9 month into the key messages that would resonate with a rural Cambodian audience, using only the key numbers, making everything as visual as possible, and easily understandable in their context. The success of that workshop has led to an ongoing dialogue about supporting other project countries, with the most exciting prospect being a new project in Sierra Leone!

The key milestones that marked out my first year were to; 1) meet farmers on the ground and establish whether this product is needed, and would, in principle, be accepted on the market, 2) set-up and operate a pilot production facility to see whether the resources and equipment required to raise BSF are available, 3) conduct feed trials on the BSF produced to assess safety & nutritional quality 4) identify additional investment required to scale-up to a commercial-level facility, and identify sources of funding/investment. Having only set-up the pilot facility in June, 6 months into the year, of the four milestones I have completed the first two, with the third in view after Tet holidays, and the fourth due by June 2016. So my ‘1 year project plan’ is still on track, although it’s staggered 6-months from my arrival in country.

Further developments in the near future focus on mechanising each element of the operational process; mixing and preparing feed, harvesting, cleaning & processing. This will go hand-in-hand with the phased scale-up of production, using larger trays, and procuring bigger feed quantities. This will in turn enable us to sell excess larval production, after testing and lifecycle requirements. Alongside this, data collection for each stage of the operation; in terms of production quantities (mass & number), efficiencies (feed conversion ratios & protein content), and timelines will be key to improving efficiencies. Exciting times ahead.

None of this would have been possible without the support of Tan & Minh Nguyen, of VietNam Insight, the consultants who helped me do the initial market research and facilitated the regional meetings. Dennis Oonincx & Emilie Devic, Europe-based academic entomologists who have offered expert insight in both the research/data collection aspect, and the more practical project management & troubleshooting side of things.  Nhon & Thu, the Nong Lam students who work tirelessly beside me day-in and day-out, who uncomplainingly shovel shit (literally), come-up with ideas & improvements to make our lives easier, and our project more efficient. And of course the Research Institute for Biotechnology & Environment at Nong Lam university, who have been supportive throughout. I look forward to working with all of these valuable partners over the coming year.

Everyone knows the feeling of moving into a new house – big empty spaces, full of possibilities, but devoid of personality. What every home needs is furniture – somewhere to sleep, somewhere to hang out. So over the course of the last few weeks we have been upgrading the insectary where the pupae emerge as adult flies, mate, and lay eggs. There is no Barry White or beds covered in rose petals, but we have designed and build new pupation boxes, where the pupae rest for 8-15 days, whilst inside the pupa (the hard outer shell, like a caterpillar’s cocoon), the larva metamorphoses into a fly. It’s cool, dark, and safe. We painted the boxes silver to reflect the heat, and covered the rooves with a heat-proof layer, as well as layering banana leaves on top to reduce the direct sunlight. Then, because fly pupae (and newly emerged adults) are so vulnerable to predators, to prevent unwanted visitors we drilled small holes in the front of the boxes big enough for flies to emerge, but too small for frogs and lizards to get in.

The new pupation boxes (nicknamed ‘the spaceship’) replace the dilapidated boxes we purchased from a previous student, which didn’t withstand the rainy season, nor provide the necessary volume for the quantity of pupae we’re producing.