Modern biotechnology holds great potential for expanding the scope of fermentation to create novel foods and improve the sustainability of food production.

Highlights Brewers’ spent grains (BSG) were fermented by a food-grade fungi. Proteins and its hydrolysates were extracted using an ethanolic-alkali mixture. Fermented BSG protein hydrolysates showed better functional properties. The protein hydrolysates showed antioxidative and non-cytotoxic effects. Application of the protein hydrolysates as a plant-based emulsifier was promising.

Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), an insect known for feeding on waste biomass and converting it into useful nutrients such as proteins, lipids, and chitin, has been reared on insect farms on a large scale. In this study, chitin was isolated from the exoskeleton of the black soldier fly using different extraction protocols, such as chemical solvents, enzyme-assisted fractionation, and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction. The levels of effectiveness of the recovery of the chitin fraction using different extraction methods were then evaluated by determining the physicochemical properties of the extracted insect chitin using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and X-ray diffraction. The results show that the use of eco-friendly acids and solvents such as lactic acid, acetic acid, and ethanol as well as bacterial proteases holds promise for the defatting, demineralization, and deproteinization of the exoskeleton to yield good quality chitin, albeit with impurities.

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