About BSF Israel

Aims and Objectives:

Animal domestication and the establishment of farming practices can take decades. This process can be accelerated through joint research, resource, experience, and knowledge sharing. Israeli BSF consortium has been established to utilize this strategy to accelerate the development of a circular economy solution based on thoroughly crafted BSF farming.

Addressing the challenges through multidisciplinary research combining nutritional, entomological, biochemical, industrial, agricultural, genomic, ecological, microbiological, energy, and economic inputs will generate a body of data across the value chain. The data, collected, monitored, and validated by data scientists and industrial engineers, will be processed and reiterated by AI-powered software to maximize the value of the knowledge.  This unique collaboration will accelerate the development of the BSF industry in Israel and position Israel as a BSF world leader.

The consortium activities include:

  • mapping of wastes and industrial by-streams as BSF feedstock ingredients
  • screening conditions for optimal BSF rearing and scaling-up
  • establishing BSF colony maintenance practices by monitoring genetic stability and preventing pathogen spread
  • evaluating the performance of high-quality BSF protein and frass in animal feed, agriculture, and energy
  • collecting and analyzing BSF data to develop machine-learning tools for effective BSF rearing.

Expected outcome:

  • Creating a first-in-the-class AI tool to power the BSF industrial operations
  • Establishing precise BSF rearing – designing BSF diets to provide optimal rearing performance, product profile, nutritional value tailored to downstream applications and cost-effectiveness
  • Optimization of colony health, genetic value and stability
  • Implementing de-chitinized de-fatted BSF protein in animal feed
  • Leveraging BSF products in agriculture, animal feed and energy

Work groups:

  1. Waste to products – evaluating the performance and product profile on hundreds of unique BSF diets composed of local wastes and by-streams
  2. BSF colony maintenance – dealing with the maintenance, oviposition, and genomic stability of the BSF colony using gene editing tools and studying of viruses and pathogens
  3. BSF high-quality ingredients in Ag-Tech applications – evaluating the performance of BSF products in animal feed (poultry, fish, shrimps) and soil and energy applications
  4. Al-based data management and recommendations – enabling learning system for analytics, data storage, recommendations, and process optimization