Full ADOPT Grant: Round 1

Overview

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £2 million for on-farms trials and farm experiment projects.

This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

Scope

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

Your project must have the potential to significantly improve one or more of:

productivity
resilience
sustainability and progression towards net zero farming

Your project must focus on testing and trialling ideas or solutions that are either new or not yet widely used.

You must demonstrate to other English farmers, growers or foresters how the project will benefit them.

You must outline how you will communicate and share the outputs from your trial or experiment during and after your project.

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, technological maturity, markets, theme, practices and processes, farming sectors and regions. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach

Specific Themes

Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one or more of the following sectors:

agriculture
horticulture
agro-forestry

Innovate UK will fund industrial research projects as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Eligibility

Your project

If you are successful, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. Please see further guidance on green box subsidies here WTO Guidance for support in Agriculture.

Applicants receiving this type of support must ensure that there is minimal to no distortion of trade and comply with the requirements of Annex 2 of the Agriculture Agreement.

Your project must:

have total costs between £50,000 and £100,000
last between 6 and 24 months
start by 1 November 2025
end by 31 October 2027
intend to exploit the results from or in England
carry out all of its project work in the UK
embrace open innovation principles and be willing to share results with other farmers, growers or foresters
have a Project Facilitator as part of the project team who is listed in the ADOPT Innovate UK Business Connect database

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.

Lead organisation

To lead a project you must:

be an active farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in England
be able to evidence that you are an established commercial business, including sole traders and partnerships
have a UK bank account
collaborate with at least one other farming or growing businesses of any size, based in the UK

It is desirable that you also collaborate with other UK registered organisations.

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Academic institutions cannot lead.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a farmer, grower or forester based in the UK.

You may also collaborate if you are a UK registered:

business of any size
academic institution
charity
not for profit
public sector organisation
research organisations
research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs in the application.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you cannot use subcontractors from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A farmer, grower or forester can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

If an organisation is not leading an application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

Sanctions

This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

Previous Applications

You cannot use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Innovate UK will not award you funding if you have:

failed to exploit a previously funded project
an overdue independent accountant’s report
failed to comply with grant terms and conditions

Innovate UK may withhold a grant payment at any time if you have any outstanding sums due to us in relation to other projects.

Exlusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
are based on equine systems
involve wild caught fisheries
are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use
are based on funded crop variety plot trials
are based on existing demonstration trials or projects
include aquaculture, such as algae and seaweed, for human consumption
fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi or cultivated meat

Innovate UK 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

Funding Costs

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has allocated up to £2 million, working in partnership with Innovate UK to fund on-farm trial projects in this competition. Funding will be 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 farmers, growers or foresters geographically based in England.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

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

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 60% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains 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:

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

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

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

To find out more see our: Cost Guidance for Academics.

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