Insights into the effects of geographical sourcing area on nutrient composition and sensory attributes of nine edible insects

With the rapidly growing world population, climate change uncertainties and depletion of our natural resources, edible insects are seen as sustainable and viable bioresources for food and feed to tackle global food and nutritional security issues, for their nutritional value, taste, and environmental sustainability. In this study, we investigated the effect of geographical distribution on the nutrient composition and sensory attributes of commonly consumed edible insects, namely Acheta domesticus, Apis mellifera, Gnathocera trivittata, Gryllotalpa africana, Imbrasia oyemensis, Locusta migratoria, Macrotermes subhylanus, Nomadacris septemfasciata, and Rhyncophorus phoenicis collected from six different geographical areas namely Fizi, Kabare, Kalehe, Idjwi, Mwenge and Walungu, in the Eastern D. R. Congo. Depending on edible insect species, geographical sourcing area affected significantly macronutrient composition and mineral profile as well as sensory attributes of investigated commonly edible insects. A principal component analysis (PCA-Biplot) indicated that the two axes accounted for up to 97.7% of the observed variability in the nutrient composition and sensory attributes of commonly consumed edible insects sourced from different geographical area. Visualized results after cluster analysis using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) indicated that the geographical sourcing area has substantial and significant effect on the nutrient composition as well as sensory attributes of the studied commonly edible with a stress value of 0.185.