Abstract:

The main nutritional components of the larvae of the rice stem borer, Chilo suppressalis Walker, were determined. Then the international general nutritional value assessment method was applied for the overall nutritional assessment of its protein. The results showed that the contents of water, ash, fat, protein and total sugar in the larvae were 694.8, 5.7, 218.9, 138.3 and 6.1g/kg, respectively. The larvae also contained many kinds of valuable minerals, such as Cu, Mn, Zn, Fe, Ca, K and Mg. The contents of unsaturated fatty acids and saturated fatty acids were 303.2 and 93.7g/kg, respectively. But the content of essential fatty acid was only 3.7g/kg. The larvae contained 17 amino acids and 7 the essential amino acids to human. The content of total amino acids was 99.76g/kg, and the essential amino acids were 44.92% of the total amino acids while the percentage of the essential amino acids content to the nonessential amino acids were 81.55%. The first limiting amino acid of the larvae protein was the amino acid containing sulfur (Met+Cys), and the second limiting amino acid was Val. The study found that C.suppressalis larvae possessed the good nutritional value.