University of Thessaly
University of Thessaly (UTH), with 37 Departments, and 8 schools is a University with its own identity and with a prominent position in the national educational system of Greece. Today the University of Thessaly has 39.000 undergraduate students, about 3000 postgraduate students, about 1000 PhD students and 610 members of teaching and research staff. The Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology (LEAZ) is an autonomous research unit that belongs to the School of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment of UTH. Since 2014, LEAZ has started studying intensively the exploitation of insects as a nutrient source, working particularly on the optimisation of the mass-rearing on insects as an ingredient of animal feed. Currently, several strains of Tenebrio molitor, Hermetia illucens, Alphitobius diaperinus and Zophobas morio are maintained in the facilities of LEAZ. Moreover, LEAZ has participated in several research projects on edible insects. Overall, LEAZ has obtained a prominent position at the national, European and international level, and has attracted funding that exceeds 8,000,000 Euros during the last 10 years, from different sources, including the EU (Horizon 2020, LIFE, ERA-NET, PRIMA etc.), but also different international organizations, such as IAEA, USDA-ARS/USDA-APHIS, EFSA, ECPA etc., as well as companies that are active at international level.
