Farming Futures R&D Fund: Precision Breeding Competition

Overview

Defra, in partnership with Innovate UK, is investing up to £12.5 million to support collaborative precision breeding projects focused on improving sustainability and productivity in UK farming.

This funding is aimed at ambitious, mid-stage R&D projects that deliver practical benefits to farmers and growers in England. Projects must target either horticultural or arable crop subsectors and should clearly demonstrate how they support the sector’s transition to more sustainable farming practices.

Aligned with the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, this competition supports innovation that either builds on existing publicly funded work or accelerates the journey towards commercialisation — but won’t fund duplicate efforts already covered by platforms like the Crop Genetic Improvement Platform.

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

Last up to 36 months

Must start by 1st January 2026

Must end by 31st December 2028‍

Award value

Your project’s total eligible costs must be 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