Earthworm Based Products, Scope and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Scientists suggest that earthworms contained sufficient protein to be considered as animal food or sources of feed protein (Lawrence and Millar. Nature Lond 3939:517, 1945). The first successful animal-feeding trials were organized on chicken and suckling pigs (Sabine. The nutritive value of earthworm meal. In: Hartenstein R (ed) Proceedings of conference on utilization of soil organisms in sludge management, Syracuse, Kalamazoo, pp 122–130, 1978). There have been numerous analyses of the constituents of the tissues of different species of earthworms. The mean amounts of essential amino acids recorded are very adequate for a good animal or fish feed as recommended by Food and Agriculture organization of United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO), particularly in terms of lysine and the combinations of methionine and cysteine, phenylalanine and tyrosine, all of which are important components of animal feeds. Earthworm tissues contain a preponderance of long-chain fatty acids, many of which non-ruminant animals cannot synthesize, and an adequate mineral content. The production of earthworm protein for feeding fish, crustaceans, chickens, and pigs is marginally uneconomical in developing countries because of the high cost of labor involved in separating earthworms from vermicomposts. In countries such as India and the Philippines the economics of earthworm feed protein are much more favorable due to lower labor costs, and many more commercial projects are underway.