By-products of insect farming as a novel sustainable biofertilizer for crops
Katherine Y Barragán Fonseca, Daan Mertens, Pedro Beschoren da Costa, Joop J A van Loon, Marcel Dicke · 2026
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Description
Barragán Fonseca and colleagues test in 2026 whether leftovers from insect farming can feed crops as a sustainable fertilizer. They used exuviae, the shed outer skins of farmed insects, worked into farm soil.
In a two-year field experiment, mustard plants in the treated soil grew as well as or better than plants given reference organic fertilizers. They grew taller and wider, made more flowers, drew more pollinator visits, and produced more seed than untreated plants. A parallel greenhouse study found richer and steadier communities of root-associated microbes in the treated soil, including several bacteria known to promote plant growth. The authors present the waste stream as a way to support circular farming.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Katherine Y Barragán Fonseca, Daan Mertens, Pedro Beschoren da Costa, Joop J A van Loon, Marcel Dicke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 58 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |