3rd Edition of Agriculture, Forestry, and Horticulture World Conference 2027

Abstract

For less than 30 years, the industry has increasingly invested in alternative proteins like plant-based and insect proteins, with markets projected for double-digit annual growth (Lurie-Luke, 2024). These proteins, particularly insect-based, are produced rapidly, using fewer resources and emitting less CO2 than vertebrate proteins. Plant proteins require 2–3 times fewer resources (Pimentel & Pimentel, 2003), while insect proteins use 5–10 times less (van Huis et al., 2013). Insect proteins’ minimal land use via vertical farming is strategic for countries like France with limited arable land. However, scaling production faces challenges, as seen in Ynsect’s financial difficulties with its Amiénois Yfarm facility. Issues in production, storage, and transport in an immature industry, combined with technical manufacturing hurdles, create universal obstacles. Although insect proteins resemble vertebrate muscle proteins (Queiroz et al., 2023), their extraction is complicated by nano-structuring and unwanted molecules like lipids and chitin. Extraction and purification, as with plant proteins, can denature proteins, impacting solubility, stability, and rigidity (Nascimento et al., 2023). Mastering nano-structuring of alternative protein dispersions, gels, and powders is critical, requiring tailored cultivation, extraction, and processing, though nano-structuring data remains scarce. Extensive research on cultivation and protocols, especially for insect proteins, has been published in top food science journals (Lurie-Luke, 2024) by institutions like Wageningen, Penn, UC Davis, Copenhagen, Nanyang, Illinois, Cornell, Waterloo, and Florida, with growing scientific interest (Queiroz et al., 2023; Lisboa et al., 2024). Proposed strategies include lactic enzymes to improve digestibility (Kim et al., 2024), ultrasound to solubilize aggregates (Nascimento et al., 2023), and blending with milk proteins to enhance rheological and organoleptic properties (Queiroz et al., 2023). However, findings often rely on intuitive or speculative cause-effect relationships based on chemical or micrometric data, leading to repeatability and scalability issues. Variations in culture composition cause inconsistent extraction properties, and scaling from lab to industrial levels complicates parameter consistency. Mechanistic insights into structural factors like density, porosity, and network branching provide clearer cause-effect relationships, enabling rational adjustments. Relying solely on functional correlations without quantitative mechanistic understanding is inefficient. To address this, we studied these complex systems using advanced techniques like TEM-TOMOCA and high-resolution NMR, rarely used in food science (Kefauver et al., 2024; Kretsch et al., 2025). These methods are so advanced that their use alone warrants publication in top journals in 2025. Combining techniques like SAXS, NMR, and TEM-TOMOCA is rare, even outside food science. We focused on effective treatments, such as milk and alternative protein blends (Nascimento et al., 2023), and proposed new parameters and treatments to elucidate mechanistic links between processing and properties, enhancing understanding and industrial applicability.