Insects for functional pet food
Website Vives
University of Applied Sciences
About the Company :
Name of the company : VIVES
Type of organisation : University of Applied Sciences
Field of activity : Higher education & research institute
Location : Roeselare – Belgium
What are the main commitments of your company?
Within the field of Food Processing and Food & Health, there is a strong focus on valorizing loss streams from the agro and food industry, developing food products tailored to specific target groups and industrial application possibilities of microwaves.
Within the field of Smart Farming, we work on the optimization of pig farm management, professionalization of the short food supply chain, and smart farming techniques on land. With the latter, we assist farmers in optimizing their soil management, variable sowing and planting techniques and precision fertilizing, directed by soil scan data maps and crop yield measurements.
Minimum education requirements : Bachelor
Required languages spoken :
English or Dutch
(we have basic knowledge on French, German and Spanish)
Position summary :
Short Description of the company / lighthouse farm :
VIVES provides higher education and engages in hands-on research and professionally oriented bachelor’s degree programmes in six fields of study spread over its five campuses. VIVES has six research domains or centres of expertise, including one on agricultural sciences and biotechnology. VIVES contributes to innovations to have a regional, national and international impact on social development.
Any accomodation offered :
Yes
What are the main commitments of your company?
Within the field of Food Processing and Food & Health, there is a strong focus on valorizing loss streams from the agro and food industry, developing food products tailored to specific target groups and industrial application possibilities of microwaves.
Within the field of Smart Farming, we work on the optimization of pig farm management, professionalization of the short food supply chain, and smart farming techniques on land. With the latter, we assist farmers in optimizing their soil management, variable sowing and planting techniques and precision fertilizing, directed by soil scan data maps and crop yield measurements.
Internship description (the tasks, responsibilities, benefits) :
Mainly working with insects for food and feed. Your job will be the rearing of the insects (feeding, harvesting, …) and performing growth experiments of the insects (different strains to assess the heritability of certain traits) on different diets (containing antioxidants,…). Besides that, it is also possible that you are going to process the insects in the kitchen into a pasta (blanching and grinding) or a dry meal. Maybe also prepare some recipes (burgers, cakes,..) but that is not priority. For sure you will participate in our PetSect project where we investigate the value of insects for cat and dog food. For this project you will dry the insects in different ways (freeze dry, hot air at different temperatures and microwave) and assess the effects on the quality. You will perform chemical analyses of all macro nutrients (protein, fat, ash and fiber) and also vitamin and amino acid analyses with HPLC. We also developed a method to determine the insect fiber (chitin) with HPLC. In addition antioxidants will be investigated (TPC, FRAP, DPPH, …)
Job Details :
Duration of the internship :
2 months
Period :
Half October – half December
Application deadline :
September 13 th
Salary :
Not mentioned
Weekly Workin hours :
38 hours
To which pillar of the project can the internship be associated ?