Key Features
UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £7.8 million for small R&D partnership projects. This funding is from the industry led R&D Partnerships Fund, a part of the Defra Farming Innovation Programme.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £7.8 million
Opens: 15th Sep 2025
Closes: 5th Nov 2025
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £7.8 million in innovation projects. This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.
Innovate UK reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions under exceptional circumstances, for example, in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations, or broader government funding decisions.
The aim of this competition is to:
Your solutions must significantly improve:
Businesses within a supply chain, are encouraged to come together as a partnership to solve major challenges or opportunities.
Your project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.
Portfolio approach
Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different markets, technology and technology maturities. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.
Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the industry subsectors below:
Your project
If your application passes the technical assessment, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.
See further guidance on green box subsidies 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:
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. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must:
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Organisations that are not profit driven or do not have a commercial focus, including Community Interest Companies (CICs) and charities, are not allowed to lead in this competition.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
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.
To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must:
Non-funded partners
Your project can include non-UK partners, including partners based in the EU, who bring their own funding. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit results overseas. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.
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 business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.
If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
Academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTO), charities, not for profits or public sector organisations can collaborate on 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.
You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.
Innovate UK are not funding projects that:
Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has allocated up to £7.8 million, working in partnership with Innovate UK, to fund innovation projects in this competition. This is subject to us receiving a sufficient number of high quality applications. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
Innovate UK reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions under exceptional circumstances, for example, in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations, or broader government funding decisions.
If your project includes grant funding for farmers, growers or foresters, a minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by them in your application, must come from 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:
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.
Innovate UK may revoke our decision to provide funding without notice if government commitment for this initiative is withdrawn.
Research participation
The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% 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 30% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding
To find out more see our Cost Guidance for Academics.
Call 
Back
