The unpaved road towards efficient selective breeding in insects for food and feed—A review

Insect production for food and feed presents a promising supplement to ensurefood safety and address the adverse impacts of agriculture on climate and environ-ment in the future. However, optimisation is required for insect production to realiseits full potential. This can be by targeted improvement of traits of interest throughselective breeding, an approach which has so far been underexplored and underu-tilised in insect farming. Here, we present a comprehensive review of the selectivebreeding framework in the context of insect production. We systematically evaluateadjustments of selective breeding techniques to the realm of insects and highlightthe essential components integral to the breeding process. The discussion coversevery step of a conventional breeding scheme, such as formulation of breeding objec-tives, phenotyping, estimation of genetic parameters and breeding values, selectionof appropriate breeding strategies, and mitigation of issues associated with geneticdiversity depletion and inbreeding. This review combines knowledge from diversedisciplines, bridging the gap between animal breeding, quantitative genetics, evolu-tionary biology and entomology, offering an integrated view of the insect breedingresearch area and uniting knowledge which has previously remained scattered acrossdiverse fields of expertise.