Sharing on Food – Water – Energy – Biological – Waste Valorisation Agrotechnology Solutions to enhance crop nutrition and
productivity with minimal environmental externalities

In the afternoon of 30 Nov 2022, Research Team (Lead Principal Investigator (PI): Assoc Prof Sanjay Swarup together with Co-PIs: Prof Li Jun (represented by Dr Zhu Jingling), Prof Ong Choon Nam, Prof Zhou Weibiao from NUS and Dr Naqvi Naweed Isaak from Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) held a sharing session for staff of the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).

They shared the innovations and key outcomes of the project hosted at NERI on Novel Integrated Agrotechnologies, Plant Nutrients and Microbials for Improved Production of Green Leafy Vegetables in Singapore – A project funded by the National Research Foundation-Competitive Research Programme (Award no.: NRF-CRP16-2015-04) to explore stakeholders engagement for field implementation which could contribute towards the Singapore Green Plan 2030.

Through the NRF-CRP project, NERI together with TLL and SFA, in collaboration with local urban farms, have generated the valuable resource of microbial genomes from urban farmed vegetables, integrated with optimized and efficient agrotechnologies leading to enhanced crop nutrition and productivity with minimal environmental externalities. The products from the research outcomes are being commercialized through 2 NUS spin-off companies, NUSoil and Cornucopia Biotech. The scientific findings have been published in more than 30 journals and conference proceedings and 3 research features.