Singapore: Seeding innovation and opportunities in agritech

A stone’s throw away from the NUS campus, tucked in a shady spot within Singapore Science Park, lies one of the newest innovation and incubation facilities powered by NUS Enterprise – the NUS Agritech Centre.

Housed in the Cavendish building, the NUS Agritech Centre is a unique amalgamation of art and technology – a sandpit for researchers, entrepreneurs and visionaries to present challenges, experiments and explore market-based solutions in agriculture.

The establishment of this centre is in line with Singapore’s “30 by 30” goal which aims to produce 30 per cent of the population’s nutritional needs locally by 2030. The centre is designed to support start-ups from growth to post-harvest; building capabilities in serving up urban farming food options from lab to table.

From left: Polybee’s founder Mr Siddarth Jadhay giving a demonstration on pollination by drones to NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye, NUS Deputy President (Innovation & Enterprise) Professor Freddy Boey and NUS Enterprise Director Mr Brian Koh. 

“What I’m doing is to provide facilities at an affordable cost to our young and promising start-ups. That will hasten their companies’ capabilities, which would be very hard to do by themselves,” said Professor Freddy Boey, NUS Deputy President (Innovation & Enterprise).

“Increasingly, we are finding more NUS spin-offs from the Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP) engaged in this area. We will very deliberately pursue agritech and urban farming as a theme across our venture creation programs,” he added.

NUSoil’s co-founder, Dr Tan Wee Kee (pictured left, in purple mask) and REAPED’s founder, Mr Lim Yong Kiat (pictured right) introducing their technologies to NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye. 

Conducive environment for growth
The center is one of the first in NUS to provide such dedicated support for agritech start-ups using state-of-the-art tools and controls to provide an optimised infrastructure and environment for urban farming innovation and production.

Providing synergy for the centre is the nearby NUS Enterprise@Singapore Science Park, another NUS Enteprises’ incubation facility housing agritech start-ups as well as those focusing on foodtech, connected devices, environmental and health solutions. It also boasts a demo deck that offers start-ups of both facilities a conducive space for prototyping.

The NUS Agritech Centre grows a wide range of delicious fruits and vegetables. 

Spanning 800 square metres, the NUS Agritech Centre includes five Grow Zones in various sizes, two Precision Climate Zones, a Multipurpose Zone that can be converted in-situ to recycling waste water or as a cultivation area, a Technical Zone with germination chambers and specialised lab equipment for high-accuracy analysis, as well as Wet and Dry Washing Zones.