AgriFood

According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), global food production in 2020 was approximately 5.3 billion metric tons. However, one-third of this total production does not reach consumers' tables. The agrifood industry generates significant amounts of side streams that are often rich in valuable nutrients and compounds. Unfortunately, due to the lack of concerted efforts to aggregate these side streams and implement efficient and sustainable upcycling technologies, they are mostly underutilized. Agriculture, animal, and seafood farming generate substantial volumes of side streams. These side streams include vegetables, coffee beans, cacao, chicken feathers, innards, bones, offals, and scales. They are rich in nutrients and minerals, and there is an interest in seeking new technologies to upcycle them into valuable raw materials for consumption, packaging, or construction materials. We are currently seeking technologies that are capable of converting agrifood side streams into higher-value products. Preferably, the tech provider should be available for co-development partnerships,  R&D collaborations, IP licensing, and acquisition.

Indoor farming presents a range of different challenges to crop yields compared to outdoor farming activities. Traditional outdoor farmers intuitively know what environmental factors affect the growth of the crop. Indoor farming, on the other hand, requires the farmer to simulate the optimal climate conditions for expected crop yields. The indoor climate can either contribute to the yields or, in unfortunate circumstances, lead to the loss of the crop. However, it is not always easy to create an ideal environment for the crop.  This technology offer is a control system that allows the facility manager to align optimal crop conditions with the equipment settings in their facility, minimising the drift between settings and site-level crop conditions. The control system can also be used to compute the correlation between data across crop production, environment, and business performance. The control system can be customised further by adding other sensors for better accuracy of control.  The technology owner is keen to do R&D collaboration and licensing with innovative industrial automation companies specialising in product development of sensor networks and high-data throughput IoT gateways.   

Keratins are naturally occurring proteins found in hair, feathers, wool and other external protective tissues of animals. They are highly abundant, naturally produced and generally underutilized. At the same time, keratins offer versatile chemical properties that allow interactions with themselves or with other materials to improve behaviour. The technology provider has developed sustainable, biodegradable plastic materials by upcycling keratins derived from hair and feathers. In the preliminary studies, the technology provider has found ways to produce films that have the potential to be used as packaging materials. These films do not disintegrate readily in water, yet they fully degrade in soil within a week. They can be made in combination with other waste-derived biopolymers to improve strength to meet the needs of specific use cases. This technology is available for R&D collaboration, IP licensing, or IP acquisition, with industrial partners who are looking for a green packaging solution and to explore specific-use-case products. The technology provider is also interested to collaborate with the OEM partners having the keratin extraction facility from feathers and hair for the deployment of this technology.

Post-harvest spoilage is a significant problem along the supply chain which results in great profit losses. Fungal infestation and mould growth are some of the common reasons for food waste and nutrition loss due to post-harvest degradation. Common post-harvest treatment includes unsustainable and excessive use of chemicals which can lead to contamination of the environment and our food. Microbes associated with the plants and soil have co-evolved to confer beneficial traits to their plant counterparts. This technology relates to a highly effective and fully natural solution that exploits the plant microbiome for bio-based plant protection to increase the storability of fruits and vegetables. For example, the microbiome of microalgae can also be with beneficial microorganisms to increase the yield and reliability of algae growth in bioreactors. Moreover, microbiome tracking can be utilized to identify entry points of microbial contaminations. This technology provider is seeking research collaboration with farmers to implement this solution for both soil-based and hydroponics agriculture.   

The majority of the local indoor farmers grow crops that are harvested for their leaves. One way to increase the growth rate of such leafy greens is to provide a longer period of light. However, some of the crops grown, e.g., spinach, are long-day plants that flower when the light periods are longer than their critical day-length. While important to a plant’s life cycle, this vegetative to reproductive phase change is undesirable for farmers, not only because it shortens the harvest period hence reducing the yield, but also because it changes the taste profile. To tackle this problem, a light recipe that was able to suppress flowering was formulated. Plants grown under this light recipe showed a faster growth rate than those grown under flowering-suppressing short-day photoperiod. Moreover, they do not flower even when the light period has surpassed the critical day-length. Positive results were obtained when this light recipe was tested on spinach and arugula. This technology would work for other long-day crops, and it will be beneficial to indoor farmers who are interested to try it.

This Internet of Things (IoT) software architecture addresses a decentralized framework to provide the ability to exchange data between IoT devices autonomously without any centralized server. In recent years, the development of IoT applications has become increasingly complex. Thus, this technology addresses the problem by providing the ability to simplify the streaming of data to the IoT platforms over the web. The IoT platform is designed to assist modern-day farmers in monitoring the entire farm seamlessly. It can be customized to suit each farm depending on the type of sensors, machine vision camera, cloud storage, etc. Equipped with detailed data tracking and analytics to provide the most accurate growth process from start to finish. This design can be customized for other applications. The technology owner is looking for partners and collaborators to further co-develop this technology in urban farming. 

In Singapore, at least 30 tonnes of okara are generated daily and discarded as food waste or recycled as an animal feed.  Despite its richness in nutrients, the reuse of okara as human food is limited due to high amount of indigestible fibre and low palatability.  The team has developed a cost-effective enzymatic and fermentaion techniques to transform okara as a functional ingredient for applying into food innovations.