SEAMEO BIOTROP held a 4-day online Aquaponics Urban Farming Technical Guidance from 25 August 2021 to 27 August 2021 and on 31 August 2021. This activity aimed to increase participants' awareness and understanding on the basic concepts of urban farming, as well as to provide knowledge about urban farming cultivation technology, one of which is aquaponic techniques. This activity provided practical opportunities and innovative project development for the participants. 

The resource persons of this technical guidance were researchers in the field of aquaponics, namely Ms Shella Marlinda, MSi (SEAMEO BIOTROP Aquatic Laboratory Researcher), and Dr Ayi Rahmat, SPi, MSi (Lecturer of the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences, Institut Pertanian Bogor). In this training activity, participants received materials on:

• Introduction to aquaponics, seeding techniques, and introduction to aquaculture maintenance

• Aquaponics (harvesting) and introduction to aquaculture (stages of container preparation, understanding hatchery techniques)

• Practice: breeding, installation and selection of fish

• IoT Development for Aquaponics Applications

During the opening ceremony, the Director of SEAMEO BIOTROP, Dr Zulhamsyah Imran delivered his welcoming remarks and stated that urban farming is one of the agricultural cultivation techniques that need to be developed. "One of the developments of urban farming is the aquaponics technique with a gravel fertigation system," he said. Currently, agricultural land is becoming more and more limited, so people are starting to look at areas that have water. Hence, the aquaponics development can be implemented from a small to a larger scales. "We can develop aquaponics in a household scale or a wider building scale," he added.

Participants registered for this technical training activity were 203 participants, which 48% of the participants were schools’ teachers from all over Indonesia. Other participants were from government agencies, universities, private sectors and research institutions. (day).