Full ADOPT Grant: Round 10

Description The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £5 million for on-farm trials and farm experiment projects. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received. This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme , delivered in partnership with Innovate UK. 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 the following: • productivity • resilience • sustainability and progression towards net zero farming Your proposal must demonstrate to other English farmers, growers or foresters how the idea or solution will be of benefit to them. If you are unfamiliar with the Innovate UK application process, you may wish to explore the ADOPT Facilitator Support Grant . The support grant is designed for applicants to engage with an external Project Facilitator to aid in the project scoping and application submission to the ADOPT Full Grant competition. There is also a Support Hub available for applicants needing to request information or general support. In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it. We consider a range of factors when determining whether to provide funding to applicants. This includes an assessment of prior conduct, such as any outstanding payments owed to Innovate UK or UKRI. Such factors may influence the funding decision, potentially resulting in a refusal of funding or an award subject to additional scrutiny. We also reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions. This may be in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations or broader government funding decisions. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information. Project size Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £50,000 and £200,000. Accessibility and Inclusion We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us. You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance. We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline. You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays). Your proposal 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 We want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, technological maturity, markets, theme, practices and processes, farming sectors and regions. We 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 Research categories We will fund, industrial research projects as defined in the guidance on categories of research . Projects we will not fund We are not funding projects that: • do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England • are based on funded crop variety plot trials • are based on existing demonstration trials or projects • are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use • are for cultivated meat • are based on equine systems • involve wild caught fisheries • involve aquaculture, such as algae and seaweed for human consumption • involve fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi for human consumption We cannot fund projects that are:

Who can apply 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: • have total costs between £50,000 and £200,000 • last between 6 and 24 months • start by 1 April 2027 • end by 31 March 2029 Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK. 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 . Lead organisation To lead a collaborative 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 an eligible UK bank account • collaborate with at least one other farming, growing or forestry business of any size, based in the UK It is desirable that you also collaborate with other UK registered organisations. If you are part of a farming or growing co-operative, you should apply individually. More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules . Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone. 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, you must be an active commercial farmer, grower or forester based in the UK. You can also collaborate with the lead applicant if you are a UK registered: • business of any size • academic institution • charity • not for profit • public sector organisation • research organisation • 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 the 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 request funding • you must explain why you’re collaborating and how the collaboration will work • no single organisation can claim more than 70% of the total 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. You may include your Project Facilitator under subcontractor costs. Number of applications An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. Any further applications by the same organisation as lead will be made ineligible. An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications and if not leading, can collaborate in any number of applications. Non-funded partners Your project can include organisations who do not claim any funding for their work on the project. Their costs will be covered from their own resources. These can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit the results outside the UK. Where non-funded partners have been invited to the application on IFS, their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs. 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 terrori

Before you start You must read the guidance on applying for a competition on the Innovation Funding Service before you start. Before submitting, it is the lead applicant’s responsibility to make sure: • that all the information provided in the application is correct • your proposal meets the eligibility and scope criteria • all sections of the application are marked as complete • that all partners have completed all assigned sections and accepted the terms and conditions (T&Cs) You can reopen your application once submitted, up until the competition deadline. You must resubmit the application before the competition deadline. What we ask you The application is split into three sections: • Project details. • Application questions. • Finances. Accessibility and Inclusion We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us. You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance. We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline. You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays). 1. Project details This section provides background for your application and is not scored. Application team Decide which organisations will work with you on your project and invite people from those organisations to help complete the application. Application details Give your project’s title, start date and duration. Research category Select the type of research you will undertake. Project summary Describe your project briefly and be clear about what makes it innovative. We use this section to assign the right experts to assess your application so you must be clear about which agricultural, horticultural or agro-forestry area you are working in. Your answer can be up to 400 words long. Public description Describe your project in detail and in a way that you are happy to see published. Do not include any commercially sensitive information. If we award your project funding, we will publish this description. This can happen before you start your project. Your answer can be up to 400 words long. Scope Describe how your project fits the scope of the competition by: • indicating which on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities you are addressing • summarising how your project will be testing and trialling on-farm or immediate post farmgate solutions that are either new or not yet widely used You must also state the name of the approved ADOPT Project Facilitator who will be supporting you in the project. If your project is not in scope, i