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Technical University of Munich

Proteins4Singapore

Pictures: Vijay Varanasi

 

Singapore is a small state which has almost no space to devote to agriculture and which has to import almost all of his food supply.

The Protein4Singapore project is part of a broad and ambitious initiative driven by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), which has the goal of self-producing 30% of the country nutrition need by 2030 in the framework of the so called “30 by 30” plan.

Within this contest, the government designates $144 million to support research and innovation in the farming sector to improve sustainable urban food techniques, furthering advanced biotech-based protein production and developing innovations in food safety science.

(Singapore: Food security despite the odds, Food for Thought by Lim Kok Thai, CEO, SFA).

General project description

The Proteins4Singapore research program will put together distinguished scientists of plant and food technologies, food chemistry and business sustainability to generate state-of-the-art methods and techniques to ensure a sustainable protein supply in highly urbanized environments. One of the main focus will be the conduction of a pilot experiment of a soybean vertical farm in Singapore. Outputs from this fully controlled growth experiment will be used to study how to maximize grain protein yield per unit area and year.   

Specific goals of the whole project

Below are the main objectives of the Proteins4Singapore project as listed on the TUM Create webpage:

  • Develop synergies between cultivation of indoor soybean and algae biomass within optimized space and a minimum use of resources and utilize these raw material sources to gain functional high-value, pleasant-tasting, and functionalized proteins and peptides.
  • Link efficient and sustainable extraction methods for these protein sources to the techno-functional, nutritive and flavor aspects of food production.
  • Enable an analytical characterization platform for functionality-driven optimizations of protein cultivation and processing and establish knowledge for functionalization of these proteins/peptides by thermomechanical processing and bioengineering techniques.
  • Create novel and efficient food production concepts by reverse engineering approaches and launch an additive manufacturing platform for large-scale industrial or decentralized food production platforms.
  • Specify functional aspects and identify the mechanisms of beneficial food-microbe interactions and their advantages for the Singaporean customer.
  • Develop a resilient local supply chain of protein-based agri-food products and assess the protein supply chains for the proposed production technologies with the tools of e.g., life-cycle assessment and techno-economic assessment.

Specific part for DAG chair

Prof. Senthold Asseng is the Principal Investigator for soybean grain protein production in the controlled-environmental conditions and also for the topics regarding nutritional value and processibility of the soybeans as well as combination with the other research areas of the Proteins4Singapore project, such as the algae production.

The team around Prof. Asseng research on the quantify of the protein production potential of soybeans under fully optimized growing conditions. Therefore, crop modeling, crop physiology, field productivity data and additional controlled indoor experiments are combined and investigated. The experiments in the controlled environment will be carried out in high-tech experimental infrastructure at the Singapore partners. The trails will include a range of factor combinations with light, temperature, CO2, nutrients and water. Further, the group investigates on the maximum yields using the crop simulation model DSSAT-Soybean.

The nutritional value and processibility towards specific food textures of the protein fraction in high-yielding indoor soybeans (which could differ from field soybean) will be determined and a protocol for the indoor farming soybean production will be published.

General information about TUMCREATE

TUMCREATE is a research platform for the advancements of Singapore's food studies. Researchers from Technical University Munich (TUM) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) join forces with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and A*STAR’s Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI). The program is funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) as part of the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE).  Source: TUM CREATE

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