Full ADOPT Grant: Round 6

Key Features

Farming, growing or forestry businesses based in England can apply for a share of up to £5 million for on-farm trial and demonstration projects, to improve adoption of new ideas or solutions in the agricultural sector.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £5 million

Opens: 5th Feb 2026

Closes: 8th Apr 2026

TBAT

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Grant Overview

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will invest up to £5 million for farm experiment projects and on-farm trials. Funding will be delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

Grant Scope

The competition is to support innovative on-farm trials or experiments that test ideas or solutions or demonstrate and address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges.

Projects must have the potential to vastly improve one of more of the following:

  • Resilience
  • Sustainability and progression towards net zero farming
  • Productivity

Projects must focus on testing and trialling new ideas or solutions that are not yet widely used. Projects must also address significant industry challenges or opportunities in at least one of the following sections: agriculture, horticulture, or agro-forestry

Eligibility criteria

Applications that pass the technical assessment are subject to the green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. Projects need to have costs between £50,000 and £100,000 and last between 6-24 months starting by 1st September 2026 and ending by 31st August 2028.

  • Lead: Be an active farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in the UK and with an eligible UK bank account.
  • Project Team: To collaborate with the lead, organisations must be a farmer, grower or forester based in the UK. Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project.
  • Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations who do not claim funding for their work on the project. Their costs need to be covered from their own resources.
  • Subcontractors: Are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used but you must make the case in your application as to why UK subcontractors couldn’t be used.
  • Number of Applications: Farmers, growers or foresters can only lead on one application but can collaborate on a further 2 applications.
  • Previous Applications: Previously submitted applications can be used for this competition.

Exclusions

The following projects are excluded from funding:

  • Projects that do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.
  • Projects that are based on funded crop variety plot trails
  • Projects based on existing demonstration trails or projects
  • Projects that produce crops or plants for medicinal or Pharmaceutical use
  • Projects for cultivated meats
  • Projects for equine systems
  • Projects involved in wild caught fisheries
  • Projects involved in aquaculture for human consumption
  • Projects involved in fermentations systems for human consumption

Grant Funding

Up to £5 million of grant funding has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be issued in the form of a grant. A minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by farmers, growers and foresters must be allocated to English based farmers, growers and foresters.

Funding eligible project costs:

  • up to 80% if you are an active farming, growing or forestry business based in England, Scotland or Wales
  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation, including active farmers, growers and forestry business based in Northern Ireland
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large sized organisation

Research Organisations

Organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 60% of the total eligible project costs. Consortiums containing more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them.  Of that 60%, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

  • 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution, such as an academic

Eligible criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding 

  1. Research organisations using the Je-S system must submit their costs through the Je-S system, which calculates the 80% FEC figure.
  2. On IFS, only the 80% FEC output should be entered at 100% funding.
  3. Applicants do not need to show the remaining 20% on the finance table.

For further information on this competition, please see full details.

Full competition details

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.