NUTRITIONAL COMPOSITIONS AND GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF MEALWORMS Tenebrio molitor CULTIVATED WITH DIFFERENT AGRICULTURAL WASTES

Over-exploitation of natural fish stock and highly fluctuation of international price in fishmeal making aquaculture feed production using fishmeal is no longer a sustainable and environmental friendly approach. Hence, alternative protein source such as insect meal for feedstuff manufacturing is highly sought after to substitute fishmeal as the major ingredient. Larvae of Tenebrio molitor (yellow mealworm) is proposed as an alternative source of protein in this study, because of its ability to convert agricultural wastes into flesh mass and utilize them as energy sources. In present study, agricultural wastes e.g. watermelon rinds, broilers' eggshells, banana peels and the combination of these wastes were used in mealworms T. molitor cultivation. The nutritional effects and growth performance of mealworms T. molitor were tested after 28 days of feeding trial. The data of the proximate analysis and growth performance were analysed using ANOVA (Tukey's test).

Our results showed that watermelon rinds consist the most crude protein (11.57%), moisture (9.57%) and crude fibre (32.44%); broilers' eggshells has the most ash (89.54%) while banana peels contains the most crude fat (17.18%) and nitrogen-free extract (NFE) (43.18%) (Table 1). In terms of growth performance, watermelon rinds as a single diet showed the highest specific growth rate (SGR) (2.50%) and feed conversion efficiency (FCE) (0.10%) among all treatments, while banana peels improved the survival of mealworms T. molitor by 97.48%. In general, watermelon rinds and banana peels showed promising results in mealworms T. molitor mass cultivation. As a conclusion, our study provides an important dataset of the application of insect meal in aquaculture feed production.