Many have qualms about the strawberries we can find in Singapore’s supermarkets.
Common grievances include strawberries being too sour, or delicious but coming at a hefty price tag.
Since it is difficult to grow strawberries at scale in the lowland tropical climate of Southeast Asia, the ones in Singapore’s supermarkets are usually flown in from countries around the world.
Thus, they are either harvested prematurely – resulting in a mediocre taste, or expensive as they are air-flown from countries like Japan or South Korea.
The strawberries market is worth several hundred million dollars in Southeast Asia, and goes up to more than US$7 billion, if countries like China are taken into account.
Singrow has developed a vertical farming solution that addresses every stage of a plant’s agricultural journey, from breeding to harvesting.
This differs from other vertical farming solutions which typically do not address plant breeding.
The startup is co-founded by two scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Bao Shengjie and Xu Tao.
Co-founder and CEO of Singrow, Bao Shengjie, shared with Vulcan Post in an interview that he has always had green fingers.
As he grew up in China, he was exposed to agriculture from an early age.
“I remember accompanying my parents on their visits to various farms and was always amazed at it,” said the plant physiology expert.
“When I first arrived in Singapore, I was extremely excited to see shelves stocked with strawberries from all over the world, only to realise that many of these options were either expensive, or sub-optimal.”
Shengjie eventually started growing his own strawberries as a hobby in 2016, and went on to study strawberries as part of his PHD thesis work.
He attained a PhD degree in the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS in 2017, and started Singrow two years later.
Singrow currently has two proprietary strawberry types: White Crystal and Red Ruby.
It took Shengjie three years to complete six generations of cross-breeding and selection to finalise the current Crystal strawberry thpany offers.
According to Shengjie, the Red Ruby strawberries offer one of the highest sweetness levels available in Singapore, while the White Crystal strawberries offer a unique taste and aesthetic.
More importantly, we hope our strawberries will show that premium quality options doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg.
Besides being of high quality, the strawberries will also be cheaper for end consumers as they are grown locally.
Singrow’s vertical farm is set in the Sprout Hub, a repurposed sports hall in the old Henderson Secondary School.
The indoor farm spans 500 square metres and has a 6.5 metre tall ceiling.
Even though strawberries are typically grown in temperate regions, Singrow is doing so without the use of air-conditioning, which helps to further cut costs.
“Local production, and reduced operating costs, means that we can better control qualities such as freshness, taste, and cost to the consumer,” said Shengjie.
The company will yield its first harvest of around 200kg or 1,200 punnets of strawberries this September.
The system uses a robotic arm to help with the pollination of flowers and harvesting of strawberries.
According to Shengjie, it enables the company to “significantly improve outcomes” as compared to conventional pollinators, the honeybee.
With all these factors combined, Singrow is able to produce approximately 6 to 8 harvests (worth 1,200kg to 1,600 kg of strawberries) per year, doubled that of its closest competitors from Japan.
Thus, this ensures year-round availability of strawberries.
The startup has also caught the eye of two angel investors from Singapore and the UK and received funding from them.
As for its future plans, Singrow can leverage on its technology to develop cultivars of other crops that can be grown in controlled conditions, such as grapes and saffron.
It also plans to establish a larger facility for commercial crop production, with a view to expanding overseas, in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
We intend to continue developing our research …
