Republic Poly opens first cloud-based lab for agritech in a S’pore institute of higher learning

SINGAPORE – Republic Polytechnic (RP) has officially launched the first cloud-based agriculture and food technology laboratory in an institute of higher learning in Singapore.

Unlike traditional labs, the Sustainable Technology and Analytical Research Laboratory lets RP students and staff monitor experiments and analyse data remotely.

Speaking to the media on Friday, Dr Lim Boon Whatt, director of RP’s School of Applied Science, said the facility’s analytical capabilities will support Singapore’s “30 by 30” initiative, which aims to produce 30 per cent of the country’s nutritional needs by 2030.

He said: “If we want to grow high-yield crops, we need to know exactly what is needed to allow optimum growth, and one way to know that is to analyse the output – for example, whether vegetables produced are high in nutrient levels and have sufficient vitamins.”

A team from the school has used the lab to help four local fish farms develop a method to identify red snapper that have what the farms consider the best genetic traits.

Having a cloud-based system enhances collaboration, said Dr Lim, as farms that engage RP for batch analysis can access data remotely via a mobile app instead of having to go to the school for the data.

The 3,000 sq ft lab, which was set up in partnership with Japanese precision instruments and medical equipment manufacturer Shimadzu (Asia-Pacific), was officially unveiled by Education Minister Chan Chun Sing on Friday on the sidelines of the polytechnic’s Open House 2023.

It is the second cloud-based lab that Shimadzu has helped to set up. The company previously set up a lab at Singapore Polytechnic for general applications.

Mr Prem Anand, executive officer and senior general manager of the firm’s analytical and measuring instruments division, noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalisation globally as scientists look to perform more work outside the physical lab setting.

The RP facility has instruments equipped with artificial intelligence that can self-diagnose errors and allow Shimadzu to test new algorithms and software capabilities, he said.

About 400 students each year from the diploma programmes at RP’s School of Applied Science will benefit from the facility, which will help prepare them for careers in areas such as quality assurance and quality control.

Separately on Friday, RP and Shimadzu signed a three-year agreement to expand their partnership, which began in 2019.

The agreement paves the way for short courses for adult learners in areas such as sample extraction and cloud-based analysis of urban farming produce.

It will also mean the continuation of training opportunities for both staff and students, sponsorships for student scholarships and more internships. Currently, five internships a year are available at Shimadzu for RP students.

Among those now interning at Shimadzu is third-year materials science student Nur Nabiilah, who made use of the lab for her final-year project on analysing red snapper. The 20-year-old, who hopes to become a lab technician, said: “As we usually run our experiments overnight, we typically want to check the results the day after.

“The cloud-based system saves so much time because we can split up analysis of the data and do the work from our own computers.”