The aim of this competition is to fund collaborative development of projects with ambitious solutions. Solutions provided will enable sustainable and resilient farming through addressing biotic and abiotic stresses in agriculture, horticulture and forestry to:

• support specific recommendations from recent Defra reviews, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) act 2023 and the Government Food Strategy
• resolve key issues affecting the sector, where sustainable and resilientfarming solutions can mitigate climate challenges and increase productivity
• develop innovations in agriculture, forestry and horticulture to meet challenges to plants, crops and farmed animals from both their biological (biotic) and physical environment (abiotic)

The innovative technologies in your proposal could include one or more of the following biological (biotic) and physical environmental (abiotic) challenges:

• integrated pest management ​
• detection, prevention and management of diseases​
• agro-ecology ​
• gene editing and breeding​
• regenerative cropping, livestock and mixed systems​
• livestock housing, nutrition, health and management​
• innovative fertiliser practices​
• soil resilience​
• water management and innovation​

This list is not exhaustive.

Your project must seek to significantly improve:

• productivity
• sustainability and environmental impact of farming
• progression towards net zero emissions
• longer term resilience
• food security

You must be able to demonstrate how your solution and output will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

Your proposal must:

• demonstrate environmental benefits and societal impact
• ensure your solutions are closely aligned with industry priorities to deliver business-orientated and transformative opportunities
• consider how it will encourage dissemination and knowledge exchange to the wider sector

Portfolio approach

We want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, strands, themes, markets, locations and research categories. We call this a portfolio approach.

Specific themes

Your project must focus on one or more of the following agricultural and horticultural production sectors:

Farmed animals

• monogastric
• ruminant

Plant

• broadacre: cereals, root crops, grassland
• horticulture: field based and specialist growers
• fruit: top fruit, stone fruit and soft fruit
• vineyard
• protected cropping: glass and polytunnel systems
• controlled environment and vertical farming systems

Forestry

• agro-forestry

Cross-sector

• bioeconomy

Research categories

We will fund feasibility projects, as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding projects that :

• are equine specific
• are focused specifically on financial resilience​
• are specific to non-food or ornamental plants
• involve wild caught fisheries
• involve aquaculture for fish production or human consumption
• involve cellular expression of proteins or cultivated meat
• involve acellular production systems, fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi for human consumption
• are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use
• do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
• involve post farm gate processing and packaging

We cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

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