BugBook: Setting the gold standard for research on farmed insects

Author
Affiliation

T. Klammsteiner

Department of Ecology, Universität Innsbruck

Published

November 10, 2025

Doi

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17571652


What to expect

The BugBook project was initiated and coordinated by David Deruytter (Inagro, Belgium), and brings together expertise from across Europe and beyond to address the growing need for standardized research in the field of industrial insect rearing. Comprising 13 chapters (Table 1), the BugBook project provides a comprehensive and open access manual for researchers and professionals working on the production of insects for food and feed, with a particular focus on harmonizing methodologies and experimental design. The most frequently used words (Figure 1) illustrate the scope and thematic focus of the project.


Figure 1. Word cloud constructed from the 100 most frequently used words used across all chapters of the BugBook.


BugBook chapters

JIFF logo
The BugBook was published in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed.

As research on insect farming has rapidly expanded, driven by advances in genetics, processing, and sustainability, the lack of standardized data analysis and experimental protocols has become a significant barrier to progress and comparability across studies. The BugBook project directly addresses this gap by providing guidance on standardizing processing methods, refining feeding trial protocols, and outlining best practices for chemical analysis of insect biomass. It also introduces conceptual approaches to genetic research, diversity management, and selective breeding, all of which are crucial for the sustainable development of insects as food and feed. By integrating these diverse yet interconnected topics, the BugBook serves as a comprehensive resource that fosters harmonization and innovation in insect research, ultimately accelerating the responsible utilization of insects in food, feed, and waste valorization systems.

Building on a foundation of good practices, the BugBook provides detailed guidelines for maintaining laboratory populations of key species such as Tenebrio molitor and Hermetia illucens, ensuring reproducibility and integrity in research (Table 1). It covers critical aspects of experimental design for insect production, including nutritional requirements, hazard and ecotoxicological safety, and the assessment of insect behavior under mass-rearing conditions. The project also addresses the evaluation and application of insect frass in agricultural and waste systems, emphasizing the importance of microbiome analysis and the interactions between multiple environmental stressors.

Table 1. Overview of the 13 BugBook chapters. Click on the arrows to expand the abstract and further information.


International network

In total, 109 authors from 49 institutions located in 20 countries have contributed to the BugBook. Authors collaborating on a specific chapter clearly cluster together spatially (Figure 2), while some authors contributing to two or more chapters (light green) become visible as “hubs” connecting clusters of authors in between chapters (dark green).

Figure 2. Interactive network of collaboration patterns. Use scroll to zoom in and out, and click and drag a node to explore and expand the network.


Find an expert near you

The geographical distribution (Figure 3) of people that have contributed to the BugBook project (Table 2) clearly shows a Europe-centered focus. The majority of authors are located in The Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium. The institution with the highest number of contributions was Wageningen University.

Figure 3. Interactive map showing the geographical distribution of the people that contributed to the BugBook. Scroll or click on nodes to zoom in. Click on dark green nodes to show the respective author information.


Searchable list of authors

Table 2. Overview of all contributing authors. It includes their primary affiliations, ORCID identifiers, and keywords extracted from the chapters to which they contributed to help find relevant experts for a specific topic.


Further information

Timeline and stats

All manuscripts were submitted within December 2024 and were published online latest 11 months after initial submission.

Figure 4. Overview of selected statistics. A. Timeline of chapter submissions, acceptances, and online publications. B. Institutional rankings based on the number of contributions to BugBook chapters (Top 10). C. Number of authors per chapter.


Data used for this post

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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@misc{klammsteiner2025,
  author = {Klammsteiner, T.},
  title = {BugBook: {Setting} the Gold Standard for Research on Farmed
    Insects},
  date = {2025-11-10},
  url = {https://tklammsteiner.github.io/bugbook},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.17571652},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Klammsteiner, T. 2025. “BugBook: Setting the Gold Standard for Research on Farmed Insects.” Zenodo (blog). November 10, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17571652.