At the National University of Singapore, research groups have been working on solutions to tackle the imminent food security crisis. Recently, three teams have secured funding from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) for work focused on sustainable urban food production. These projects aim to increase the productivity of local food producers while balancing key factors such as cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and climate change resilience.
A land-deficient country, Singapore imports most of its food and is vulnerable to global food supply disruptions. Urban agriculture in a controlled environment could be a promising solution for Singapore to improve its food self-sufficiency, but its success was optimized for robust crop varieties and a low environmental footprint. It depends on having growth conditions.
“The success of our project contributes to increasing food security and creating sustainability. Urban agriculture Singapore industry. For the sustainable development of Singapore’s globally competitive indoor agriculture, not only create improved crop varieties with desirable properties that have immediate commercial value in indoor agriculture, but also other new crops We will also develop research capabilities for breeding, “said Professor Yu.
Aquaculture is an important food production sector in Singapore. However, high-intensity aquaculture is often hampered by viral diseases that cause significant loss in aquaculture. In particular, the nerve necrosis virus (NNV) and the scale drop disease virus (SDDV) are the two major viral infections that afflict Asian seabass commonly bred in Singapore. Unfortunately, there are currently no vaccines available for these two viruses.
To address this issue, Professor Yang Daiwen of NUS Biological Sciences and Dr. Mookkan Prabakaran, co-principal researcher at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, aim to develop vaccines against NNV and SDDV that can be delivered orally or by immersion of fish larvae and juveniles. I am. Vaccines are based on non-infectious virus-like particles, which have a shape similar to naturally occurring viruses. “The method developed in this project will also facilitate the production of fish vaccines against pathogens other than NNV and SDDV,” said Professor Yang.
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