Summary
Defra is offering up to £12.5 million through the Farming Innovation Programme to support collaborative R&D projects that develop solutions to reduce emissions in UK farming. This funding focuses on tackling key on-farm and immediate post-farmgate challenges, accelerating the transition to low-emission agricultural practices.
To be eligible, projects must:
- Deliver ambitious innovations that cut emissions in current farming systems
- Include a full life cycle assessment (LCA)
- Provide measurable carbon impact and wider environmental benefits
- Support knowledge exchange across the sector
- Align with industry priorities and demonstrate clear benefits to farmers, growers, or foresters in England
Projects may also be subject to an independent LCA review before completion.
Scope
The aim of this competition is to fund collaborative industrial research projects to unlock the benefits of precision breeding in developing ambitious new solutions leading to more sustainable and productive farming practices.
Projects in this competition should deliver on ambitious new solutions that can help realise a range of improvements to existing crop production, including but not limited to:
- increased crop yield: quality and quantity
- increased plant resilience to pests, diseases and pathogens
- increased plant resilience to climate change, resistance to abiotic stresses
- enhanced photosynthesis or reduced crop growth cycles
- improved crop harvesting and storage characteristics
- improved nutritional value of crops, for example, biofortification
- reduced allergens and toxins in crops
- improved palatability and visual appeal of crops
- increased shelf life of crops
Your project must:
- demonstrate clear project deliverables that will enable improved resilience, sustainability and productivity for farmers or growers in England
- ensure concepts are closely aligned with industry priorities to deliver business orientated transformative opportunities
- encourage dissemination and knowledge exchange of precision breeding technologies and their potential benefit to the wider sector and increase the maturity or market readiness of emerging solutions
- evidence how precision breeding approaches can help to provide benefit for farmers or growers in England
Key themes and topics
Your project must focus on one of the following:
- horticultural crops
- arable crops
Project duration
Up to 36 months
Must start by 1st January 2026
End by 31st December 2028
Award value
Have total costs of between £1 million and £2.5 million
Funding rates
For industrial research projects, purposeful research that builds new knowledge and skills to improve or develop products, processes, or services—often through prototypes or system components that validate ideas in realistic settings, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:
- up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
- up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
- up to 50% if you are a large organisation
Research organisations can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs
Eligibility criteria
- Projects must be collaborative and led by a UK registered business of any size
- Projects must include at least one grant claiming SME
- Projects must address the specific requirements of precision breeding as set out in the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023
- The project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers or growers in England
- Collaborators can be a UK registered business of any size; an academic institution; a charity; a not for profit; a public sector organisation; or a research and technology organisation (RTO)
- Subcontractors must be preferably UK-based with fully justified and appropriate costs
- All funded project work must be carried out within the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- Subsidy control and state aid rules apply
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