Valorising rice straw waste: pre-treatment and insect bioconversion as a bridge for waste management and sustainable feed production
摘要
Rice straw is globally abundant agricultural by-product and faces significant waste management challenges. Insect bioconversion offers a promising valorisation strategy, transforming waste into valuable protein for animal feed applications. This study investigated the effects of four different rice straw pre-treatment methods—chemical (C), biological (B), biochemical (BC), and a control (N)—on substrate nutritional composition, black soldier fly, BSF (Hermetia illucens) larval growth, and the resulting larval nutritional profile employing a completely randomized. Derived results demonstrate that biochemical pre-treatment significantly enhanced crude protein (9.11 ± 0.32%) and crude lipid (2.08 ± 0.02%) content in the treated straw (p ≤ 0.05). While the control (N) exhibited higher lignin and hemicellulose levels, BC maximized cellulose content (44.4 ± 0.26%). Larvae reared on BC-treated straw demonstrated superior growth performance, exhibiting significantly higher crude protein (43.60 ± 0.27%) and lipid (9.75 ± 0.03%) levels (p ≤ 0.05), along with improved survival, waste reduction index, and feed conversion efficiency. These findings highlight the efficacy of biochemical pre-treatment in enhancing rice straw as a substrate for BSF larval production, offering a sustainable solution for both agricultural waste management and high-quality protein production for aquatic animal feed.