Urban Farming

Only 20% of actual coffee is extracted from beans to produce coffee in its beverage form, leaving the remaining 80% (six million tons annually) deemed as spent coffee grounds (SCG) to be disposed or used in landfills or as non-food product components to make fertilisers, furniture, deodorisers or skin care products. A technology was created to counteract SCG wastage and valorise it for human consumption. This particular invention comprises of methodologies to create two types of ingredients using leftover SCG - oil-grind and water-grind processed SCG. A simple, reproducible method of conching is employed to convert leftover SCG into smooth pastes, where specific conching parameters help refine the SCG to an acceptable particle size, eliminating grittiness in numerous valorised products similar to SCG. The product utilises common ingredients like oil and water to conche SCG with improved taste and textural properties. The shelf stability and nutritional composition (including caffeine) of the ingredients were also validated to ensure the food possessed good sensorial properties and are scale up ready. This technology increases SCG’s potential use as a versatile ingredient in different food applications. The technology provider is seeking off-takers from food manufacturers, food services industry, companies interested to valorise side streams to turn SCG into edible compounds.

Fast crop disease management is important to ensure sustainable production. Many tropical crops suffer from infectious diseases that spread and kill plantations. Previously, new land had to be allocated to replant crops in disease-free areas. This is now more challenging because land conversion implies deforestation. Thus, one way to improve the metrics of both production and sustainability is by testing for infection before moving the non-infectious material (i.e. in nurseries). However, as PCR testing in tropical countries is more challenging due to logistics and other factors, testing on-site would be a preferred option. This technology is a unique, portable, self-administered DNA detection kit to be used directly on-site to test for the DNA of the pathogen (virus, fungus etc.). Developed in Switzerland, the technology has already shown one use case for cocoa testing in West Africa and is shipped in the country without a cold chain.

In a world where resources are diminishing and demands are rising, the value of land has significantly increased for clean energy and food production. Agrivoltaic farming represents a potential game-changing solution that can bring substantial benefits to both the energy and food sectors. The patented technology is a tubular solar photovoltaic (PV) module designed for agrivoltaic farming. The unique tubular nature of the system allows sunlight, water, and wind to reach the plants below while simultaneously harnessing solar power. Moreover, the tubular modules can provide consistent partial shading to protect the plants and reduce ambient temperature and ground moisture loss. This technology enables the dual use of land by integrating agricultural activities such as farming and gardening with solar power generation, maximising the value derived from the limited land. The combination of energy harvesting and agriculture has significant potential to improve farming productivity, increase land-use efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and promote environmental sustainability. The technology owner is keen to collaborate with partners interested in agrivoltaic farming like farmers, gardeners, agritech companies, research centres, and ministries to test-bed and adopt their tubular solar PV technology. The technology owner is also seeking industrial partners (e.g., manufacturers, system integrators, architects, designers, etc) to co-develop a complete solar energy solution or integrate the tubular solar PV modules into specific use cases.

Singapore is currently only producing 13% of its vegetable consumption. With little farming land available, Singapore relies heavily on imports from other countries. Due to increasing focus on food security, the alternative to solve land scarcity problem is to build greenhouses on concrete rooftop. Although concrete rooftop greenhouse are able to keep pests out, there is a signifcant heating problem which severely inhibits the growth of the vegetables. Therefore, there is a need for a rooftop greenhouse that is able to actively cool itself to avoid such problem. This technology offer is a modular rooftop greenhouse farming system (hydroponics) capable of producing vegetables on concrete roofs to meet the local demand while reducing over-reliance on imports. The design of the greenhouse farming system enables cooling and does not heat up, thus allowing the growth of pest-free vegetables. The system is approximately the size of a typical carpark lot (2.5 x 5 m). The production rate is 30 kg per month (2.5 x 5 m size) and requires minimal human intervention. The technology offer comprises both the farming system and its operation know-how. The modular rooftop greenhouse farming system can be set-up within 3 days or scaled-up when required with guaranteed vegetable growth. The break-even cost of one greenhouse is about 3 years. The technology owner is seeking to out-license their technology.

Different plant species have different nutrient requirements. The current practice of urban farming uses a generic hydroponic nutrient solution that is suitable to most plant types, and a crude sensing system that only measures total ion content in the solution. This approach often results in nutrients deficiency and/or overloading and hence requires consistently monitoring. Overloading of nutrients not only increases the input costs, it also results in greater quantities of contamination in effluent to be disposed after harvest.  A targeted hydroponic nutrient solution reduces the need to periodically adjust the nutrient. The technology provider has studied and formulated different nutrient recipes that had shown improved yield compared to commercial products. This ensures the best growth for each crop type. It also reduces common problem stemming from imbalanced nutrient, e.g. leaf chlorosis due to nutrient deficiency. All these translate to a better yield and a more marketable produce for the farmers. Formulations developed include Mizuna, Kale, Lettuce, Mustard, Kalian, and Caixin. The technology provider is seeking for licensing partners from the agriculture industry.

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.