Stabilised rice

Wouldn't it be great if we could enjoy rice which is still as fresh as if it had just been gathered from the field?

To help maintain the nutrition in rice, especially brown rice, Cerealtech Corporation has conducted research on technology to allow milled brown rice to keep its nutrients and have a longer life, up to nine months. The project received funding support from the NIA.

Brown rice, which was milled less than 24 hours ago, is heated and pressured in a proper environment. The process locks the vitamins and other nutrients into the milled rice while it remains fresh, even if stored for a long time.

The technology is likely to add value to Thai rice products, allowing manufacturers to generate three to five times more income. The technology is now in the process of patent registration both in Thailand and the United States.

Baby powder from starch

A by-product from the rice-milling process has become valuable. A rice powder called rice starch is now a key material as an ingredient in the cosmetics industry.

As the starch is biodegradable, its particles will dissolve biologically with nothing remaining, so it can be used as a new filler to replace talcum in the production of cosmetics bases and baby powder.

Talc is used as filler in most baby-powder products, but particles of talc, when used over a long time, can cling inside the body and cause lung irritations. With the better properties of rice starch, it's likely that it will become an alternative material in the cosmetics industry, which not only reduces talc imports, valued at Bt600 million a year, but also adds more value to the Thai rice industry.

NIA has helped a private company called Nurture Care to produce baby powder from rice starch by offering funding support under a project to convert technology into capital.

Breeding clown fish

As catching clown fish in the sea dramatically reduces the numbers in their natural environment, a project to breed the fish in a controlled environment was developed to expand the number available for commercial use.

The project, conducted by a group of researchers at Bangsean Institute of Marine Science at Burapa University, is to develop breeding processes and growing systems as well as marine-farm management to fertilise the little fish so that people can buy them from breeding farms instead of catching them from the sea.

Since the project is aimed at breeding clown fish for commercial purposes, NIA has provided funding to Sea Born Farm to set up a standard clown-fish breeding farm. The company has licensed technology developed by Burapa University for the establishment of the farm and it expects to breed a minimum of 15,000 clown fish a month for domestic sales and export.

Clown-fish breeding has high market potential. Apart from Thailand, key target markets include the United States, England and Japan, which each year import a large number of clown fish for aquariums.

CNC controller prototype

It's a national innovation project to develop Computerised Numerical Control (CNC) controllers used in local manufacturing plants. As CNC is at the heart of a plant's production process, having local development will help plants reduce costs when it comes to maintenance.

There are around 80,000 CNC machines used in the country and half of them require retrofitting. The problem is that the plants cannot find replacement components, and often the import of the necessary parts from aboard is expensive. NIA therefore worked with Thai Machinery Association to develop a CNC controller to be at the heart of CNC devices.

The project is intended to substitute for the import of CNC controllers, making the overall cost of using and maintaining the machines much lower.

Future stem cells

With the development of stem-cell therapy, patients will soon have greater chances to be free from disease, since if any medical problem occurs they can use their own stem cells saved in a stem-cell bank to treat their illness.

Hoping to bring people closer to a world without disease, NIA has supported a medical innovation using stem-cell therapy for diabetes patients. The project, which is a collaboration among medical researchers from Chulalongkorn Hospital and Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital as well as Thai StemLife, a private company providing a stem-cell collection services, uses stem cells from the patient's own peripheral blood to cure severe limb ulcers and provide new tissue development.

In their medical treatment, patients will be dosed with stimulating for three to five days to encourage their bone marrow to produce stem cells in blood vessels, and then the cells will be extracted and kept for further use.

It's estimated that a diabetes patient has to spend around Bt1 million to cure limb ulcers and for amputations, and each year around Bt40 billion is spent on this medical treatment. With stem-cell therapy, the patient will spend just Bt200,000 while they have a better chance of saving their limbs.