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Project Summary

Our Vision

Zero Hunger

As the world population increases to 9.8 billion by 2050 leading to a food crisis, “Insects as food and feed” are attracting attention.
In 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations submitted a report on the importance of insects. Since then, the world has been paying massive attention to insects as food and feed.

Mission

Establishment of Insect-based Sustainable Food Production Systems

Our project will design insects as useful animal protein source with safe and excellent traits that can be grown from crops and food wastes.
Using these insects, we will develop a sustainable, energy-saving insect production system.
In addition, closed fully-recycling food production platform will be established that operates even in extreme environments and outer space.

Why insects?

Advantages of Insects Compared to Existing Alternative Protein Candidates

Compared to existing livestock such as cattle and pigs, crickets do not require much space and water to grow.
Furthermore, they emit less greenhouse gases, making them a biological resource with low environmental impact.
In particular, crickets and black soldier flies are advantageous as it is easy to rear and genetic engineering technologies can be applied.

  • Solutions to Food Problems

  • Low Environmental Impact

  • Can be promoted by the Moonshot Project

Impact

Ripple Effects on Economic, Social and Academic Fields

  • New feed ingredients to replace fishmeal

    The price of fishmeal, a conventional feed ingredient, continues to increase, and by 2025 it is expected to rise to 7 trillion yen, about 1.7 times the current price. Crickets and black soldier flies are expected to replace fishmeal as new feed ingredients.

  • Cooperation between Agriculture and Welfare

    Compared to conventional primary industries, insect production requires relatively light labor, and provides employment opportunities and life engaged in social contribution.

  • The Third Livestock Insect

    Since B.C., humans have been breeding and using honeybees (honey) and silkworms (silk thread) for industry. If we can establish crickets and black soldier flies, which have high productivity, as the third type of insect livestock (food and feed) for humans, it will have a lasting impact on the academic history of mankind.

Our Superiority

Our Advantages

  • Promoted genomic breeding technology
    through bioinformatics, genome editing and genome selection

  • Approach to breeding targets
    by multi-omics analysis

  • Cross-disciplinary collaboration system
    bringing together the knowledge of agriculture, medicine, and engineering

Goal

  • By 2030, insects will be utilized as a new biological resource to support human food, health, and the global environment.

  • By 2040, we will develop an insect production system that can handle any environment on Earth.

  • By 2050, a fully recycling food production system will be designed to support the safe and secure food and health of humanity in space.

Project and Team

We are composed of 17 universities and research institutes, promoting complementary and synergistic joint research and development across academic fields such as life science, insect science, food science, information science, and materials engineering