Spent coffee grounds (SCG) as an alternative feed for mealworm digestion and isolation of SCG digestive strains from mealworm gut microbiota

Abstract

Over the past few years, there are a lot of research going on regarding on biodegradation on wastes. Coffee is one of the largest consumed beverages around the world and the by-product of brewing coffee bean is Spent Coffee Grounds (SCG). Despite having so many people consuming coffee all around the world, there has not been much research going on regarding on biodegrading SCG. With the current land limitations as well as more landfills are being filled up with wastes, there is a need to biodegrade or reuse these wastes into something more useful. Hence, one of a potential way would be by using animals to biodegrade SCG. Tenebrio Molitor is an insect species also known as mealworm. Their primary source of fuel are oatmeal and they have been researched and undergoing a lot of studies regarding on them biodegrading wastes. One of the breakthroughs would be using mealworms to biodegrade plastics such as polystyrene. With this in mind, mealworms would be a potential choice to biodegrade SCG. Once these mealworms are being fed via SCG to an optimal size, they could potentially be a nutritious feed for the aquaculture. This could in turn be a good profit for aquaculture businesses by making the feeding process more sustainable. However, there are some factors that inhibits mealworms from ingesting the SCG and that would include antinutritional factors (ANF), antimicrobial properties etc. that SCG contains. Hence, mealworms are unable to ingest SCG effectively. In view of this, most of the SCG would be disposed of via landfills or through incineration. The study aims to evaluate the usage of spent coffee grounds as an alternative feed for mealworm digestion and investigate by isolating the SCG-digestive strains from the mealworm gut microbiota.