Best of our wild blogs: 17 Aug 17

The Darker Side of Pulau Hantu
Hantu Blog

31 Aug: Singapore Eco Film Festival Opening Night
Green Drinks Singapore

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AVA, Sumitomo Chemical to start full-scale rooftop farming test cultivation

ANGELA TAN Business Times 17 Aug 17;

THE Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and Sumitomo Chemical will begin full-scale test cultivation of farm produce on the rooftop of AVA's research facility this month, with the aim of establishing sustainable urban farming by 2018.

The project, which aims to promote urban farming to enhance food supply resilience in land scarce Singapore, sees the AVA and Sumitomo Chemical using rooftops of buildings for urban farming, based on Japan's proprietary technology. Other participants of the project include Kaneko Seeds from Japan, and Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Sumitomo Chemical will look into further specifics for the project, including a produce distribution system to be established. It will also set up an operational model for sustainable urban farming by around 2018, which it can use to expand the urban farming business in Asia and globally.

Commenting on the project, Damian Chan, executive director of Energy & Chemicals, Singapore Economic Development Board, said: "Agriculture chemicals is a speciality chemicals end-market that Singapore identified to have good growth potential, and where our innovation capacity and strong inter-agency collaboration could provide the foundation for companies to test-bed new innovative solutions before scaling them to the region."

Mr Chan added that Sumitomo Chemical's foray into urban farming demonstrates how Singapore can innovate to develop unique solutions to solve global problems such as food security.

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12 plots of farm land in Lim Chu Kang put up for sale on 20-year leases

Channel NewsAsia 17 Aug 17;

SINGAPORE: Twelve plots of farm land in Lim Chu Kang with longer leases of 20 years were put up for public tender on Thursday (Aug 17).

Nine are located at Neo Tiew Harvest Lane, two at Neo Tiew Harvest Link and one at Neo Tiew Harvest Place, said the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) in a news release.

The plots, which are intended for vegetable farming, range in size from 20,050.4 sq m to 21,239.9 sq m. They are part of the 60 hectares of land set aside by AVA earlier this year for food farming in Lim Chu Kang and Sungei Tengah.

This is the first tranche of a total of 36 plots which will be put up for tender from August this year. Another three plots for fish farming will be put up for tender in October.

In the second quarter of next year, seven plots for vegetables, quails' eggs and general food farming will be open for tender. The remaining 14 plots, for leafy vegetables, beansprouts and general agriculture farming, will be available from 2019.

LONGER LEASES TO GIVE FARMS MORE CERTAINTY: AVA

The longer lease period for new plots of farm land, an increase from the previously announced 10-year blocks, was announced in May after some farmers raised concerns over what they said was too short a time for them to invest in technology and automation.

The 20-year lease will give farms more certainty and let them invest in more productive technologies, AVA said then.

New methods will be used to tender these plots of land, AVA said. For leafy vegetables, fish, beansprouts and quail egg farming, a fixed price tender method will be used. Under this method, the land price will be fixed and those who make bids will compete purely on the tender proposals submitted.

A concept and price tender method will be used for general agriculture farming, where a tender will be awarded to shortlisted candidates with the highest land price.

The tender for the current tranche will close at noon on Oct 26.

Source: CNA/nc



Tender opens for 12 land parcels for vegetable farming
Kok Xing Hui Straits Times 17 Aug 17;

SINGAPORE - Twelve land parcels for vegetable farming in Lim Chu Kang - the first to be tendered out on concept rather than price - were put on sale by public tender on Thursday (Aug 17) by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA).

This means that farmers will not have to worry about engaging in a price war to secure land.

Instead, their proposals will be judged on factors such as production capability, track record, relevant experience and qualifications, and whether they can harness innovation to improve and sustain production, and keep their businesses viable.

The lot prices are fixed and come at a 20-year term.

Plots have a land area of at least 20,000 sq m and are located along Neo Tiew Lane, Neo Tiew Link and Neo Tiew Place. Prices range from $13.62 per sq m to $14.92 per sq m.

A 20,167 sq m plot in Neo Tiew Lane, for example, will cost $276,000 for farming without an aquaponic system and $288,000 for farming with an aquaponic system.

Land prices were fixed by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore's Chief Valuer's Office, which took reference from prices of agriculture land sold by the Government, said the AVA.

The 12 parcels are part of the 36 new plots of farmland in Lim Chu Kang and Sungei Tengah that AVA will put out on 20-year leases.

The other three types of farmland to be tendered out in this way over the next few years will be for quail eggs, food fish and bean sprouts.

Other plots for general agriculture food farms, such as frog and goat farms, will be tendered using concept and price. Proposals will first be evaluated on concept. Of the shortlisted candidates, the one with the highest bid will then win the tender, said the AVA.

The last time land was tendered out for agricultural use was more than two decades ago.

Tender packets containing details and conditions of tender of the land parcels are available for sale at the AVA Service Centre at Jem in Jurong. The tender will close at noon on Oct 26.

Come end-2021, the leases of 62 farms in Lim Chu Kang will run out, and the land will be given over to military use.


Spurring R&D in farming
Audrey Tan Straits Times 17 Aug 17;

Instead of trying to get farmers to outbid one another for new farmland that will be released later this month, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) will have them out-think the competition with their concepts.

When new farmland for growing leafy vegetables is released, the plots will be tendered out on a concept - not price - basis.

This means that the price of the land will be fixed, and farmers will not have to worry about engaging in a price war in trying to secure the land.

Such a tender method - adopted for the first time by the AVA - will give farmers more liquidity to invest in high-tech equipment or research and development (R&D) to increase productivity and yield.

Releasing land this way could help to push farmers initially sceptical about such investments to take the first step. This is especially so because their bids will be based on concepts instead, and judged on factors such as production capability, track record, relevant experience and qualifications, and whether they can harness innovation to improve and sustain production, and keep their businesses viable.

Under this fixed-price tender method, land will be parcelled out by farm type. Other than leafy vegetables, the other three farm types to be tendered out this way, over the next few years, will be for quail eggs, food fish and beansprouts.

This new tender method is an important move for Singapore's food security. It comes at a time when farmland in land-scarce Singapore continues to shrink and climate change poses a threat to global food supplies more than ever.

Currently, local food production meets less than 10 per cent of total food demand. Singapore has to step up its food security within the constraints of limited land - and the way to do this is through R&D.

But encouraging innovation would take more than a day. Mindsets have to be changed through policy, while also taking into account farmers' financial constraints. This tender method seems set to help do that.

Audrey Tan

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Fish mistaking plastic debris in ocean for food, study finds

Behavioural evidence suggests marine organisms are not just ingesting microplastics by accident but actively seeking them out as food
Fiona Harvey The Guardian 16 Aug 17;

Fish may be actively seeking out plastic debris in the oceans as the tiny pieces appear to smell similar to their natural prey, new research suggests.

The fish confuse plastic for an edible substance because microplastics in the oceans pick up a covering of biological material, such as algae, that mimics the smell of food, according to the study published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Scientists presented schools of wild-caught anchovies with plastic debris taken from the oceans, and with clean pieces of plastic that had never been in the ocean. The anchovies responded to the odours of the ocean debris in the same way as they do to the odours of the food they seek.

The scientists said this was the first behavioural evidence that the chemical signature of plastic debris was attractive to a marine organism, and reinforces other work suggesting the odour could be significant.

The finding demonstrates an additional danger of plastic in the oceans, as it suggests that fish are not just ingesting the tiny pieces by accident, but actively seeking them out.

Matthew Savoca, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “When plastic floats at sea its surface gets colonised by algae within days or weeks, a process known as biofouling. Previous research has shown that this algae produces and emits DMS, an algal based compound that certain marine animals use to find food. [The research shows] plastic may be more deceptive to fish than previously thought. If plastic both looks and smells like food, it is more difficult for animals like fish to distinguish it as not food.”

Plastic debris in the oceans, ranging from the microscopic to large visible pieces, is recognised as a growing problem as it does not readily degrade and hundreds of thousands of tonnes are dumped in the sea annually. Larger pieces have been found in the intestines of whales and seabirds, where they are thought to be potentially fatal, while the smallest pieces have been detected in the guts of even juvenile fish and molluscs. Numerous species of fish eaten by humans have been found to contain plastic, and the effect of eating these on human health is still unknown.

Efforts to reduce marine plastic have so far had little effect: microbeads widely used in cosmetics and other products have been banned in the US, the UK and other countries, but they only solve part of the problem, which is mainly caused by dumping of plastic rubbish. There could be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050, campaigners have warned.

Scientists have struggled to understand exactly how the massive increase in plastics may be affecting the behaviour of fish and marine ecosystems, and how to contain the problem.

A previous paper published in the journal Science that alleged juvenile fish were attracted to microplastics “like teenagers after junk food” was withdrawn earlier this year after controversy. The scientists involved in that paper, who have no relation to the authors of today’s study, were suspected of having exaggerated their data or failed to carry out the purported experiments properly. The new paper did not draw on that publication.

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Best of our wild blogs: 16 Aug 17

Pulau Ubin Nocturnal Bird Survey Report
Singapore Bird Group

From tarsiers to cloud rats, scientist strives to save Philippine species
mongabay.com

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Singapore buildings ‘can withstand tremors from strongest quake’

They will remain structurally safe due to good construction, support from lift shafts: Experts
Jose Hong Straits Times 16 Aug 17;

When an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 hit Sumatra at the weekend, Singaporeans living in residential areas such as Sengkang and Tanjong Rhu felt the earth move.

As objects in their homes shook and rattled, the thought in many residents' minds was: Can my Housing Board block withstand the tremors?

"Yes" was the response of experts interviewed by The Straits Times.

"The quake would have to be three to four times stronger to cause some light damage in Singapore," said Associate Professor Li Bing of Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Even tremors from the strongest quake possible at the nearest fault zone to Singapore would not topple tall buildings here, like a 25-storey HDB block, the experts added.

Most likely, the building will experience low-level damage, but it would be structurally safe, said Assistant Professor David Lallemant of NTU's Earth Observatory of Singapore.

One reason is the lift shafts inside tall structures, he added. These shafts are built to support and prevent the buildings from swaying too much.

Prof Lallemant likened it to a shelf from furniture retailer Ikea: "The back part of the shelf - the metal 'x' - is what keeps it from swaying."

Another reason is that Singapore's buildings are well constructed, Prof Li said, adding: "Just as healthy people are less likely to get diseases."

In June 2000, Singapore was also shaken by tremors from an earthquake in Sumatra that measured 6.5 on the Richter scale.

They happened at around midnight and hundreds of residents from East Coast to Yio Chu Kang fled their homes as the series of strong tremors shook their beds and caused things to fall out of their cupboards.

Then Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng emphasised that such natural occurrences were normal. Singaporeans should not be too worried or concerned, he said, adding: "If the earthquake is very severe, then Singaporeans will of course feel it in their homes".

Since then, the Government has also adopted a set of building codes that includes guidelines on making new buildings more resistant to earthquakes.

It was introduced in 2013 by regulator Building and Construction Authority (BCA). Older buildings that undergo major renovations will be brought up to the new standards.

Around the same time, a study concluded that it is unlikely for a quake to occur near and powerful enough to damage buildings in Singapore.

It was done by Professor Pan Tso-Chien of NTU's Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management.

The fault zone nearest to Singapore is the Sumatra fault and the strongest recorded earthquake it generated was of magnitude 7.7 in 1892.

In 1943, an earthquake struck at the point of the Sumatra fault that is closest to Singapore, around 400km away. The most powerful tremor it caused was of magnitude 7.6.

A BCA spokesman told The Straits Times that seismic waves from earthquakes along this fault zone closest to Singapore would arrive here at levels not significant enough to cause structural damage to buildings.

However, senior research fellow Aron Meltzner of NTU's Earth Observatory of Singapore urged caution. Although no similarly powerful tremors have occurred along the Sumatra fault since World War II, this does not mean it will not happen in the future, he said.

"Magnitude-7.7 earthquakes have happened in our historical past. We should plan for the likelihood of that within our lifetime," he added.

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Malaysia: It’s not supposed to rain but weather experts know why

The Star 16 Aug 17;

PETALING JAYA: The heavy bouts of rain these few days are raising many an eyebrow because this time of the year is when Malaysia is, by norm, hot and dry.

But weather experts aren’t surprised.

“The downpour in many areas in Peninsular Malaysia is caused by the north-westerly winds coming from the Indian Ocean, transmitting high humidity to Malaysia.

“The rains in Sabah and Sarawak are caused by high moisture levels in the air and active oscillation, resulting in thunderstorms,” said Malaysian Meteorological Depart­ment director-general Alui Bahari.

He said the rains would subside on Friday.

Fire and Rescue Department director-general Datuk Wira Wan Mohd Nor Ibrahim said firemen were busy responding to weather-related disasters. And so is the Malaysian Civil Defence Force (APM).

A spokesman told The Star that APM officers and assets were already deployed to flood hotspots.

“Our role is to carry out rescue operations and transport victims to the relief centres,” he said. “We also clean and inspect the victims’ homes for any venomous creatures.”

APM also provides training, especially to those living in flood-prone areas, on what needs to be done should a disaster occur.

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Malaysia: Higher cost of environs-friendly containers cause for concern

YEE XIANG YUN The Star 15 Aug 17;

JOHOR BARU: Many food operators are still hesitant about making the switch from polystyrene containers to environmentally-friendly food packaging due to the higher cost involved.

Federation of Hawkers and Petty Traders Association Malaysia president Yow Boon Choon said the difference in cost was about 1:3 in ratio and some of them were not keen to pay more for the environmentally-friendly food packaging such as biodegradable plastic containers.

He said such food packaging costs about 20 sen each compared to the few sen for each conventional polystyrene container.

Yow, also Johor South Petty and Mobile Traders Association chairman, said the traders did realise that it was a healthier choice and better for the environ­ment to make the switch but that the cost is still a main concern for them.

“At least 30% of the food operators in Johor have already made the switch from polystyrene ahead of the state government’s move to make Johor plastic and polystyrene-free starting from January 1 next year.

“The remaining operators have expressed their fear that the new packaging would increase their operational costs.

“But I am sure that once more people start to use and get used to the environmentally-friendly containers, the price will become cheaper,” he said.

He said most food operators absorb the cost of takeaway con­tainers and only a small number impose such charges on customers, which varies from 30 sen to 50 sen.

Yow said the federation had advised food and beverage operators, especially in Johor, to make the switch soon as it benefits the consumers and gives them peace of mind when taking away their food in environmentally-friendly packaging.

He said he hopes that they would gradually start making the switch so that there would not be a rush to buy the new containers when the time draws near for the ruling to be implemented.

“I also hope the state government will be strict and firm in the implementation of the no-polystyrene ruling come next year.

“This is to prevent the traders from suffering losses once they stock up on the new takeaway containers and also inconsistency,” he added.

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Cambodia: Rare crocodile eggs hatched at conservation center

SOPHENG CHEANG Associated Press Yahoo News 15 Aug 17;

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Nine eggs of an endangered crocodile species found in the wild in June and taken to a conservation center in southern Cambodia have hatched, conservationists announced Tuesday.

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and Cambodia's Fisheries Administration said the eggs of nine Siamese crocodiles have hatched at the Koh Kong Reptile Conservation Center after being retrieved from the wild to protect them from poachers and predators.

The WCS says the crocodile, with an estimated global population of around 410, is found only in Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, with the greatest number in Cambodia. The species is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because its numbers are rapidly shrinking.

The June discovery of 19 eggs was the first Siamese crocodile nest recorded in six years of research and protection in Koh Kong's Sre Ambel area.

The conservation center was established by the two organizations to safeguard endangered reptiles such as Siamese crocodiles and Royal turtles.

"We will take care of these hatchlings until they are able to survive in nature on their own," the groups' joint announcement quoted Som Sitha, WCS's technical adviser for the Sre Ambel Conservation Project, as saying. "We will then release some to the wild, and others will be kept for breeding."

His colleague Tun Sarorn, caretaker of Royal turtles and Siamese crocodiles at the center, expressed her excitement over the hatchlings.

"I am so excited to see these hatchlings. It is the first time I have taken care of them since arriving at the center," she was quoted as saying. "Before seeing them, I was surprised to hear their voices from inside the eggs. It was amazing, and I felt so happy because I realized they are coming out. I will feed them all in the next few days with small fish and frogs."

A different conservation group, WWF-Cambodia, separately announced encouraging news about another endangered species, the Irrawaddy, or Mekong, dolphin, which has a worldwide population of about 7,000, 90 percent of that in Bangladesh. In Cambodia, and Laos, there are an estimated 80 adults in the Mekong River. WWF-Cambodia announced Tuesday that from January through this week, they recorded two dolphin deaths and eight births, an improvement over the same period last year when there were four deaths and four births.

"More than ever, there is hope to believe it is possible to reverse the trend of the Mekong Dolphin decline," the group said in a statement.

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Can We Feed The World With Farmed Fish?

ALASTAIR BLAND NPR 15 Aug 17;

For years, scientists and activists have sounded the alarm that humans' appetite for seafood is outpacing what fishermen can sustainably catch.

But new research suggests there is space on the open ocean for farming essentially all the seafood humans can eat. A team of scientists led by Rebecca Gentry, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that widescale aquaculture utilizing much of the ocean's coastal waters could outproduce the global demand for seafood by a staggering 100 times.

Their paper, published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, could have significant implications for a planet whose human population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050. Nearly every coastal country has the potential to meet its own domestic demand for seafood, "typically using only a minute fraction of its ocean territory," write the authors.

In their research, the scientists analyzed the potential of virtually every square mile of the ocean's surface for producing 120 different species of fish and 60 species of bivalves – that is, mussels, clams, oysters and scallops. They immediately eliminated ocean waters deeper than about 650 feet, since ocean aquaculture generally requires anchoring floating pens and cages to the seafloor. They sought out areas rich in dissolved oxygen and phytoplankton – essential for bivalves, which filter microscopic food from the water.

The researchers also excluded marine protected areas and regions where floating pens and cages might block shipping lanes and port entries or interfere with oil extraction.

They calculated that marine aquaculture could produce 16.5 billion tons of fish per year, or about 4,000 pounds per person.

"And we were being very, very conservative in our calculations," says co-author Halley Froehlich, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara.

Froehlich says it's not likely that aquaculture will be practiced in every feasible location. "And we certainly would never need so much production," she says. "That number was really an overestimate to show what the potential is."

Still, even with a downsized calculation using a much more realistic fraction of the ocean's surface, the numbers are impressive: The scientists' math shows that an area of water about the size of Lake Michigan – roughly 1/67th of a percent of the ocean's surface – could produce about 110 million tons of fish and shellfish per year. That's about the amount of seafood caught annually by commercial fishermen, and about five times the globe's current aquaculture production, Froehlich says.

While the production potential of aquaculture is clearly massive, such volumes of fish and shellfish could not be grown without costs. Aquaculture can offer environmental benefits – but only under certain circumstances, and there are many ways in which aquaculture can go wrong.

Salmon farming in British Columbia has been associated with declines in certain streams' runs of wild salmon, since a parasite called the sea louse that sometimes thrives amid densely raised farmed fish can attack wild fish. (The issue is a contentious one, and scientists, activists and fish farming lobbyists still disagree over how directly salmon farms have impacted wild salmon.)

Many aquaculture operations also rely on wild-caught fish as feed. This has driven overfishing in some places, like Peru, whose anchovy population has been. Shrimp farming operations in Southeast Asia have become notorious for destroying mangrove thickets and pouring harmful effluent into estuaries.

"So, we know and we've seen how aquaculture can be done incorrectly, and we're looking at the potential for improvements," Froehlich says.

Max Troell, a scientist at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, co-authored an essay published in the same issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution that analyzes Gentry's and Froehlich's findings.

"The work of Gentry and colleagues shows that space is currently not a limiting factor for the expansion of oceanic aquaculture," Troell writes.

But there are other constraints. Growing fish means feeding them, and this, Troell tells The Salt in an email, requires either catching wild fish or growing high-protein vegetable crops on land. Since these are products already consumed by people, Troell notes in his commentary piece, "reducing competition with human food resources will be key for sustainability."

In a 2014 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Troell and several co-authors assessed aquaculture's potential to improve the resilience of the planet's food systems. In that paper they asked, "[D]oes continued growth in aquaculture enhance or undermine the potential of the global food system" to feed humanity?

The jury remains out on that question.

In an email interview, Troell tells The Salt that, if aquaculture production of fish is scaled up dramatically, "[t]he link to terrestrial feed sources will increase," and so will environmental impacts.

"For filter feeders like mussels, the story is different," he says.

Unlike fish, they don't need to be fed, since they filter naturally occurring nutrients and organic matter from the water.

This, says Troell, makes them "very beneficial species to scale up" in aquaculture.

Growing them could even be good for the environment. Froehlich tells The Salt that dense flotillas of shellfish pens could actually mitigate some types of pollution. For instance, such pens could be useful at river mouths, where nutrients from inland farmlands can cause algae blooms that, in turn, deplete the water's oxygen and create so-called "dead zones" – like the massive one that develops every summer in the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to polluted Mississippi River discharge.

Froehlich is continuing to study aquaculture's potential to sustainably feed the world, with some focus on different types of feed and how efficiently farmland can be used to help produce fish and shellfish. She notes that "fish are extremely efficient at converting feed material into body mass," and that some species can turn food into fat, bone, muscle and other tissue at a conversion ratio of nearly one to one. "That's a pound of feed in, and a pound of fish out," she notes.

Froehlich believes seafood consumption will eventually replace a considerable amount of land-based meat production, and she hopes to quantify the extent to which this could alleviate agricultural pressures on land and water resources.

"There's a discussion and a movement of people switching to pescatarian diets," she says. "So, we want to know, what will that translate into?"

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Best of our wild blogs: 15 Aug 17

Cyrene with dugong signs, stars and more!
wild shores of singapore

OCBCcares Fund for the Environment – how to submit an competent proposal? Training workshop on Thu 24 Aug 2017: 4.00pm – 7.00pm
Otterman speak

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Singapore scientist wins Asean award for research on rice

VALERIE KOH Today Online 15 Aug 17;

SINGAPORE — Singapore might not be a rice-producing country, but that has not stopped it from contributing to research in the field.

Last week, Dr Yin Zhongchao, 50, was named the Outstanding Rice Scientist of Singapore at the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) Rice Science and Technology Ambassadors Award.

To mark Asean’s 50th anniversary, the inaugural award was given to 15 rice scientists and farmers across the region at a ceremony in the Philippines.

Dr Yin, a senior principal investigator at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory who has been studying how to genetically improve rice grains, was the only winner from Singapore.

He said yesterday in an interview with TODAY: “Young Singaporeans may prefer bread or spaghetti, but rice is a staple, especially in Asia ... (As) a food safety concern, rice is important to us.”

Much of his research is underscored by the need to boost productivity in paddy fields, and to keep bacteria from destroying harvests.

Containing bacteria is important for farmers during seasonal monsoons or floods, which could cause bacteria to spread, Dr Yin said.

Without advancements in research and development, bacteria could kill up to 80 per cent of a harvest and affect the quality of the remaining crops.

Dr Yin, who is married with two sons, attained Singapore citizenship in 2006. He was born into a family of rice farmers in Anhui, China.

As a child, he learnt to transplant rice on paddy fields and harvest grains. Later, he pursued postgraduate education in plant genetics, focusing specifically on rice.

At the invitation of a former supervisor, he moved to Singapore to study bacterial diseases in rice after getting his PhD in 1997.

In 2005, Dr Yin and his research team published their findings on a cloned gene — Xa27 — in a scientific journal. Once introduced to rice grains, the gene builds resistance to bacterial blight, which causes the wilting of seedlings and drying of leaves.

The team modified another gene, Xa10, to keep pace with the evolution of bacteria, and in another breakthrough in 2015, they were able to use the modified gene to build resistance to 26 bacterial strains from various countries including China, Japan and Australia.

Dr Yin’s team also worked on the Xa10 and Xa27 genes to induce products that could trigger “cell death”.

“The bacteria is either killed by the death of the cell, which produces a lot of toxin, or by the loss of nutrition,” he said. “(So, it) cannot spread further to the surrounding healthy cell (of the rice grain).”

On his award, his employer Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory said that it “recognises Dr Yin’s outstanding scientific research in the field of understanding bacterial diseases in rice, as well as his positive contribution to rice productivity improvement at the Asean level”.

Last year, Dr Yin was part of the team that contributed seven varieties of Singaporean rice seeds to the Norwegian Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed facility.

Among them was a variety known as Temasek Rice, modified to be disease- and weather-resistant.

The Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA), which nominated him for the award, said Temasek Rice has favourable qualities such as high yields, and fungal and bacterial resistance.

“The development of Temasek Rice is a successful example of research benefiting people and the environment,” it told TODAY.

Dr Yin’s team also works closely with farmers in the region to develop sustainable farming practices to improve productivity and the livelihoods of the rice farming community, and their work would help to contribute to the long-term food security for the region, the AVA added.

Despite these breakthroughs in agricultural science, Dr Yin feels that his work is hardly done.

“I want to learn how bacteria infects rice plants and then grow new rice with greater resistance,” he said.

“As a scientist, we cannot say we’ve finished research in a certain field. In rice bacteria, there are still many questions that (have) to be answered.”

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