Full ADOPT Grant: Round 7

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: 9th Apr 2026

Closes: 3rd Jun 2026

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Grant Overview

Innovate UK and The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are investing up to £5 million so support on-farm trials and farm experiment projects.

Grant Scope

The aim of this competition is to support innovative on-farm trials or experiments to test ideas or solutions that demonstrate they will address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities. Projects must have the potential to significantly improve productivity, resilience and/or sustainability and progression towards net zero farming.

Projects must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in one or more of the following sectors:

  • Agriculture
  • Horticulture
  • Agro-forestry

Eligibility Criteria

When applying for funding, your project must have total costs of between £50,000 and £100,000. Projects must start by 1st November 2026 and end by 31st October 2028 and last between 6-24 months. Projects need to embrace open innovation principles and be willing to share results with other farmers, growers or foresters and have a Project Facilitator as part of the project team who is listed in the ADOPT Innovate UK Business Connect database.

Lead: To lead a project, organisations must be an active farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in England. Collaborating with at least one other farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in the UK Have an eligible UK bank account and be able to evidence that you are an established commercial business.

Project team:

To collaborate with a lead, organisations must be a farmer, grower or forester based in the UK or be a UK registered business of any size, academic institute, charity, not-for profit, public sector, research organisation or research and technology organisation. Each parter must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead on the project.

Non-funded partners:

Projects can include organisations that do not claim any funding for their work on the project. These costs will be covered from their own resources and can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are allowed to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit the results outside of the UK.

Subcontractors:

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used, but you must state why UK subcontractors were not used in your application.

Number of applications:

A farmer, grower or forester can only lead on application but can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications. If organisations are not leading an application, they can collaborate in any number of applications.

Previous applications:

Previous applications can be used in this competition.

Grant Exclusions

The following projects cannot be funded:

  • Projects that do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
  • Projects not based on funded crop variety plot trials or existing demonstration trials or projects
  • Projects to produce crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use
  • Projects for cultivated meats
  • Projects based on equine systems or involved in wild caught fisheries
  • Projects involving aquaculture or fermentation

Grant Funding

The department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in partnership with Innovate UK has allocated £5 million to fund in-farm trial projects. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

A minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested must be allocated to farmers, growers or foresters based in England.

If organisations work on the project is commercial or economic, funding requests must not exceed the below limits.

The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.

For industrial research projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

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

Research participation

Rsearch organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 60% of the total eligible project costs. Consortiums that contain 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

Eligibility 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.