A research lab turned platform for the smallest farms on Earth, and the first ones off it.
We've spent five years learning how to rear Tenebrio molitor at scale. Now we package that knowledge as software, curriculum, and field advisory, so anyone building an insect operation can stop guessing.
Just the know-how, in three productized forms.
A structured curriculum for hobbyists, smallholders, and operators preparing to scale. Self-paced video modules, downloadable protocols, and a quarterly cohort with live office hours.
A web-based operating system for insect rearing facilities. Batch tracking, climate logging, yield forecasts, feed/substrate accounting, exportable compliance records. Built for facilities from 10m² to 4,000m².
Hands-on consultancy for organisations entering insect protein. Feasibility studies, facility layout, supplier mapping, regulatory navigation, hiring the first scientist. Ten engagements a year, maximum.
Insect protein is not a thesis about saving the planet, it is a thesis about feed conversion ratios, land cost per kilo of dry protein, and predictable cycle times.
A mealworm converts feed to body mass between six and ten times more efficiently than a cow, on a hundredth of the footprint, in 80 days instead of 730. That is not an ethical claim; it is an engineering one.
The numbers below are aggregated from peer-reviewed literature and our own facility logs (2021, 2025). They are the spine of every business case we have helped author.
SOURCES, VAN HUIS 2013 · OONINCX 2015 · ENTOLAB INTERNAL 2024
Our archive covers the species we've personally reared at production scale and the substrates, climates, and failure modes that come with each. The catalogue below is the publicly-indexed slice; the rest sits behind the Platform and Advisory.
Of every farm we know, ours weighs the least, eats the worst, and finishes the fastest. That is not a marketing line. It is a mission requirement.
A crewed Mars transit is 1,100 days. At a NASA-baseline protein intake of 0.8 g/kg/day, a four-person crew consumes around 235 kg of dry protein over the mission, mass you don't want to launch. Tenebrio molitor is, by every metric we can measure, the most launchable protein source ever studied.
Mealworms convert organic substrate to body mass at 1.6:1, complete the rearing cycle in 80 days, and metabolise lignocellulosic waste, exactly the byproduct stream a closed-loop habitat produces. The frass becomes substrate for plant growth. The protocol closes.
The program. Entolab is opening a research collaboration with space agencies, university astrobiology labs, and private mission integrators to author rearing protocols, microgravity tolerance studies, and integrated bioregenerative life-support architectures.
We bring five years of T. molitor husbandry at production scale and the only commercial software stack designed for batch-level insect operations. We don't fly the payloads, we write the playbook.
PRIOR ART, ESA MELiSSA · BEIHANG LUNAR PALACE 1 · OONINCX 2015 · KATAYAMA & TAKO 2018 · ENTOLAB INTERNAL 2024–26
One email a month: a new protocol, a yield benchmark, a piece of regulation worth reading. No marketing copy. Currently sent to 4,182 operators, researchers, and curious gardeners.