Abstract
Black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) are currently reared at an industrial scale, mainly as a feed ingredient. The logistic chain not only involves the production of larvae, but also stabilisation, storage, and transport. The aim of this work was to study fermentation and vacuum packaging of larvae as potential preservation technologies. For fermentation, blanched larvae were pulverised into a paste, and a starter culture, NaCl, and glucose were added. The mixture was fermented for 7 days at 35 °C and then stored for 14 days at 4 °C and pH and microbial counts were monitored. Vacuum packaging was applied to living, blanched and frozen larvae. After packaging, they were stored for 6-10 days at several temperatures and gas composition, survival (living larvae) and microbial counts (killed larvae) were recorded. Fermentation allows storage of pulverised larvae, but points to consider are a rapid pH reduction and the presence of bacterial endospores. Vacuum packaging did not bring added value over cooling alone. This was the case for all types of larvae investigated. Vacuum packaging is not considered as a valuable preservation technology to pursue for storage and transport of black soldier fly larvae.