New centre in Singapore will breed high-quality tilapia for sustainable fish farms

SINGAPORE – The high rate of fish mortality in local farms is a major pain point for the Republic’s flagging aquaculture sector.

To address this, a farming coalition has started a new centre with the purpose of breeding high-quality baby tilapia fish.

On May 20, Mr Ken Cheong, chief executive of the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation (Safef), said the National Broodstock Centre for marine tilapia aims to produce its first batch of selectively bred young fish by early 2026 for local farms to purchase.

The six-month-old centre – located at Max Koi Farm in Lim Chu Kang – is managed by Safef and funded by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).

The aim is for the baby tilapia produced to have desirable traits such as reddish-golden skin, immunity to disease and the ability to grow up to a kilogram in weight.

Having high-quality eggs and baby fish is crucial for viable aquaculture production. Currently, Singapore’s fish farms depend on overseas fingerlings, which come in inconsistent quality and may have undergone stress from the long journey, reducing their survival rate, said Mr Cheong.

Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Koh Poh Koon has said in Parliament that fish mortalities here can reach 80 per cent due to inconsistent quality of eggs and fingerlings.

Safef also leads a farming coalition called The Straits Fish, which comprises five tilapia farms in the Johor Strait and hatcheries.

This team in 2023 pioneered the push to farm saltwater tilapia

using sustainable methods that do not harm the marine environment. These include using pelleted fish food instead of expired bread to feed fish.

The baby tilapia produced by the centre will be sold only to farms that join The Straits Fish or adhere to sustainable farming practices, said Mr Cheong. This is part of Safef’s push to raise farming standards in the Johor Strait, which has 74 open-cage farms as at October 2024. The Straits Fish players include Heng Heng Fish Farm, Millenia Farm and a hatchery called Century Aquaculture.

Tilapia is also known as the “chicken of the sea” because it is easy to farm and takes between six and eight months to reach selling size. Asian sea bass, on the other hand, takes up to 1½ years to grow and can be double the price of tilapia. A 200g pack of tilapia fillets under The Straits Fish brand costs $6.90 on FairPrice’s website.

The National Broodstock Centre for tilapia is one of two facilities under Singapore’s Aquaculture Plan to overhaul the Republic’s aquaculture sector. The other broodstock centre is in the SFA-run Marine Aquaculture Centre on St John’s Island, which has been running an Asian sea bass breeding programme for years.

At the two-storey centre that Safef revealed to the media on May 20, several tanks are filled with 2,500 juvenile tilapia each – the offspring of tilapia sourced from local farms.

Some of the more fast-growing juveniles that have other desirable traits will be selected to form the first generation of brooder fish. Brooders are mature fish kept for breeding purposes.

Most of their offspring will be sent to the Century Aquaculture hatchery nearby, and their subsequent spawn will be sold to The Straits Fish farms in early 2026, to grow them to maturity.

The rest of the offspring will become the next generation of brooders at the centre, as it takes several breeding cycles to produce the high-quality fish the broodstock centre is aiming for.

Mr Cheong has also sourced baby tilapia from breeding programmes abroad to improve the quality of future offspring.

Eventually, the centre will also employ the help of university researchers who can further study the fish’s genes to identify superior individuals.

One issue Mr Cheong hopes to tackle through research is the growth of the rarer red tilapia. Currently, red tilapia can grow only up to 700g, which is not meaty enough for filleting and for selling to restaurants. Faster growth means better revenue, said Mr Cheong, who added: “A reduction of one month in the growth cycle is a 12 per cent increase in revenue.”

Seawater tilapia is unlike freshwater tilapia, which is grown in ponds and may have an unappealing muddy taste. Marine tilapia has a cleaner, light flavour. The Straits Times tried two locally farmed tilapia dishes – fried and in a curry – at Keng Eng Kee Seafood restaurant in Tampines on May 20.

Tilapia under The Straits Fish brand is sold in eight FairPrice outlets, at Qian Hu Fish Farm, at the three Keng Eng Kee Seafood restaurants, as well as online on RedMart. Currently, the five farms harvest 600kg of tilapia each week.

According to the SFA’s 2023 food statistics, local aquaculture farms produced 7.3 per cent of seafood consumed in 2023. Singapore has a target to produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.

But in 2023, local vegetable and seafood production fell.

In October 2024, The Straits Times reported that the number of sea-based fish farms here had dropped to 74, from 98 in 2023, as fish farmers exited the industry due to higher costs of using sea space, among other reasons.

Mr Cheong said reaching the 30 per cent goal is more important, and the deadline to meet it is secondary. He hopes to see dishes using at least a third of locally sourced ingredients in the near future.

“Fulfilling the first 30 per cent is something we cannot let go. On when, it can even happen in 2035,” said Mr Cheong.

Dr Koh told Parliament in March that Singapore is reviewing its 30 by 30 goal for local production “to be more focused and targeted in addressing key challenges of productivity, costs and demand, and in fostering the sector’s continued growth”.

Besides aspiring towards 30 per cent self-sufficiency, Mr Cheong noted that two more things need to be fulfilled to meet the goal: building the capacity to grow more food – which Singapore is working on – and replacing a portion of the market with local entrants.