Singapore’s tropical aquaculture tech expertise can be exported to neighbours: SFA director

As Singapore looks to ramp up its fish production for food security, the Republic’s strengths in aquaculture technologies can be shared and exported to its neighbouring countries and other tropical marine regions.

The technologies include intensive indoor farming systems, hatchery expertise and genetics-based selective breeding to produce faster-growing and meatier Asian sea bass, or barramundi, said Dr Jiang Junhui, Director of the Singapore Food Agency’s (SFA) aquaculture department.

Tropical marine fishes – which include barramundi, tilapia, red snapper and grouper – comprise just a small percentage of total fish production globally, and Singapore’s farms focus on such species.

“Singapore has the opportunity to position itself as an R&D (research and development) hub for sustainable tropical aquaculture, and our companies can become a key exporter of (such) technologies and solutions,” Dr Jiang added.
 

He was speaking at SFA’s Marine Aquaculture Centre (MAC) on St John’s Island on Monday, during an event to mark MAC’s 20th anniversary.

He noted that neighbouring countries rely on small-scale farming, with fisheries that can deplete fish stock. Selective breeding is also limited for popular tropical species such as groupers and snappers.

“Global trends show that aquaculture will have to increase as captured fisheries stagnate. Freshwater resources are limited, and therefore, more aquaculture production will be marine-based. But as farming goes on, there will be disease, sustainability and efficiency challenges – and these are the difficulties (Singapore) already face today.”

In 2022, more than 130 land and sea-based farms here produced just 7.6 per cent of Singapore’s seafood consumption.

The country’s aquaculture industry is currently nascent. Some farms face higher mortality. And there are endemic viruses at sea, such as the scale drop disease virus that forced the Barramundi Group to stop commercial production at its three ocean-based sites in the southern waters.

But Singapore has made strides in the research realm. One R&D success story is the Asian sea bass genetics and breeding programme run by MAC and the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, which started in the early 2000s.

Over the years, it developed genetically superior reproductive sea bass that can produce offspring that grow at least 30 per cent faster, and are resistant to diseases such as big belly disease and infections caused by iridoviruses and the nervous necrosis virus.

Firms here that run hatcheries, such as the Barramundi Group and Singapore Aquaculture Technologies, obtain their barramundi eggs from MAC.
 

MAC and local institutes are currently working on a similar selective breeding regime for red snapper.

Mr Tan Ying Quan, Barramundi Group Singapore’s head of strategy and corporate affairs, said: “Technology development requires a lot of time and investment, and it will take decades. But once developed, you will definitely have a competitive edge.”

Speaking at an aquaculture symposium to mark MAC’s 20th anniversary on Monday, Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Koh Poh Koon said: “In the early years, (aquaculture here) was pretty much a struggle, with no end in sight and not knowing where aquaculture was heading. But today, we are at an inflection point. Technology is now a much better enabler.”

MAC also hosts AquaPolis, a programme launched in November that brings research institutes and fish farms together to help solve pressing problems faced by the aquaculture sector here.
 

To make space for more research under the programme, MAC is undergoing some upgrading works to build more experimental tanks and a hatchery technology centre.

The revamp will be done in phases over the next two to three years, said Dr Jiang.

More updates on AquaPolis and its structure will be revealed at the Singapore International Agri-Food Week in late 2023.
 

SFA is also commissioning a study to review how its research facilities, including MAC, could be integrated with other aquaculture infrastructure such as jetties and hatcheries, said Dr Koh, at the symposium at SFA’s office in Jem, in Jurong.

This is to ensure that aquaculture-related infrastructure and research currently scattered across the island can be more synergised, he added.
 

Besides producing better-quality barramundi eggs for the industry, MAC has leveraged artificial intelligence to help farm staff count the number of microscopic zoo planktons called rotifers, a crucial food for fish larvae. Low rotifer numbers will threaten the survival of hatched fish.

Currently, hatchery staff have to painstakingly count them under the microscope, which can take about 40 minutes.

With an online tool developed with GovTech, a worker can simply take a photo of a small pool of rotifers and upload it to a software, which will give a count in a minute. MAC is planning to deploy this tool on Telegram for local hatcheries to use.
 

MAC has also helped Singapore Aquaculture Technologies – which runs closed containment farms off the eastern coast – to build a floating indoor hatchery.

The firm’s chief technical officer, Dr Michael Voigtmann, said: “We’ve never run a hatchery before. We needed someone who understands the problems and diseases in hatcheries. We did full hatchery cycles with MAC’s team, which can take 20 days. There was a lot of trial and error.”

Dr Koh added that MAC should also work closely with the industry to better understand the impact of aquaculture on the marine environment.

“If there is no good marine ecosystem, there will be no good aquaculture,” he said.

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