Dear Abbas,

Who could have imagined that the Black Soldier fly could be an investment for the future? Nevertheless, entomoculture is in the process of developing as a new industrial sector.

The latter would be of real use at all stages of their lives, which lasts only a few days. Their larvae, called Hermetia illucens, feed only on organic waste, making them excellent machines to reduce the volume of the latter. Their maggots are an excellent source of protein that could be used as animal feed. Their fat, rich in fatty acids, can also be used for food or technical applications. The "digestate" of these larvae can also produce compost to resell. Even the material that constitutes their cuticle, chitin, is exploitable: water treatment, plastic film, dressings, wound healing. The idea is therefore to retain some of these larvae to reproduce these useful cycles in reducing the volume of organic waste. And get their digestates for the compost. According to President Franck Bourgeois, it is possible with a simple handful of eggs to reduce in a few days ten tons of waste on less than 15 m2. The other part of the larvae would be transformed into a laboratory to recover all that makes its richness: proteins and oil for animal feed and biofuel, as well as chitin for the biomedical field. "No waste is produced, everything is valued," he says proudly. Placid, harmless, not a vector of germ (once it has become a fly, it does not have an oral appliance therefore does not pass from one affected environment to another), this larva is ideal to cultivate.

Surprising and unexpected, nature never ceases to indicate to us ways of solution to repair our errors. Thus, Chinese and American researchers, working closely together, have discovered that flour worms eat and digest expanded polystyrene (Frigolite), a plastic material widely used throughout the world and difficult to recycle. Each year, mankind manufactures 300 million tons of plastics, much of which is expanded polystyrene commonly called styrofoam or frigolite. Today, this plastic remains difficult to recycle when it happens to be harvested. When polystyrene does not end up in nature, this plastic is usually ground into small balls incorporated in some mortars to improve insulation, or reused to form a part of other plastics. Unfortunately, less than 10% of it would be recycled. A small worm could change the situation. Indeed, researchers have discovered that flour worms were used to this expanded polystyrene, a plastic material widely used in the industry. A worm ? One larva more precisely, that of the Tenebrion miller, a common species of beetle. The result of an international collaboration between Stanford University in the United States and Beihang University in Beijing (China), the discovery is described as "revolutionary" by the research team who consider it " One of the biggest breakthroughs in environmental science over the past decade. The scientific study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, is the first to observe the biodegradable nature of plastic thanks to the action of bacteria present in the Tenebrion larvae. Indeed, it is not the worms properly speaking that destroy the plastic but the microorganisms that live in their intestines. 50% of this is metabolized to carbon dioxide while the other hand is eliminated as excrements that return to the soil.

With my best regards

Prof. Bachir ACHOUR

Thank you Prof. Bachir

Thank you very much Prof. Bachir for this valuable illustration...

Dear Colleagues Motasem and Abbas,

You are welcome.

With my best regards

Prof. Bachir ACHOUR

Thanx

Domestic flies and cyclocephala

thank you Sadiya

thank you Dr.BP Naveen. i read it