State of the Art on Production, Processing and Uses of Meal Worm Tenebrio molitor (Tenebrionidae: Coleoptera)

Insects farming is a unique and alternate approach to produce protein rich food and feed. Insects convert organic wastes into biomass, which was successfully used to produce poultry and animal feed.Among the insects,meal worm due to its easy production and high nutritive worth is the best choices to be used as food and feed. This diverse beetle mainlyutilizes different feed products and byproducts, and generally habitatein barns, store, flour mills and grains etc. Its life cycle consists of four developmental stages: the eggs, larva, pupa and at last mature mealworm. The egg to new beetle may take up to 120 days; however, environmental conditions, like temperature, humidity and available diet have been found to reduce its developmental time.Mealworms are omnivorous and can consume all types of animal byproducts such as meat and feathers as well as plant materials. They usually fed on different cereals like wheat, maiz and oats and its bran or flour supplemented with fresh vegetable like potatoes,carrots, lettuce,and other fruits for moisture content with protein supplementation like skimmed milk powder, yeast, or soybean flour.  According to FAO data mealworms have high protein content (13.68 to 22.32 gram per portion of 100 gram) and a significant amount of fatty acids (8.90 to19.94 gram per edible 100-gram portion).  Mealworms are also graded as rich source of zinc and magnesium. Due to its high nutritional worth meal worm has successfully used as animal, poultry and fish feed, immunity enhancer, probiotic and waste degrader. Present review concluded that sustainable meal worm production will be the low cost, easy and environment friendly method to produce cheap but high-quality poultry and fish feed and feed supplements in future. Meal worm farming will be the best choice of rural women livelihood besides its support to poultry and fish feed industry in coming days.