Funding and business support to accelerate your agri-tech ambition. The UK Agri-Tech Centre can accelerate your global agri-tech ambitions and drive impactful and rapid change, connecting you to expertise, networks, facilities and funding opportunities.
Do you have an agri-tech idea that focuses on robotics, automation, advanced sensors or AI?
We help businesses bring their agri-tech innovations to market with expert advice, testing facilities and data validation. Get in touch and see how we can accelerate your ambitions.
Read on to find out about current funding opportunities to help accelerate your business’ aspirations:
Funding Opportunity: Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP): 2025 – 2026 Round 4
Deadline: November 26th
The KTP partnership brings new skills and the latest academic thinking into the business partner to deliver a specific, strategic innovation project. The knowledge base partner recruits the associate to work on the project. The associate has the opportunity to lead a strategic development within the business, developing new skills and gaining valuable experience.
Funding Opportunity: ADOPT Facilitator Support Grant: Round 5
Deadline: November 26th
This competition is designed for farmers, growers and foresters based in England who are keen to test and trial new ideas or solutions on-farm and require support to develop a Full ADOPT Grant application.
Funding Opportunity: Farming Innovation Programme: Feasibility Studies competition
Deadline: December 3
Feasibility Studies projects will test whether a research idea works in real-world conditions to support early-stage, innovative solutions and encourage businesses to work together on new ideas. There will be a consortia-building event to help you find partners.
Projects can receive between £200,000 and £500,000 in funding and last up to 24 months.
Funding Opportunity: Full ADOPT Grant Round 4
Deadline: December 10
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
Funding Opportunity: Research Grant Competition
Deadline: February 20, 2026
The HDRF Small Grant Competition provides funding of up to £27,500, tenable for up to 24-months, for research projects of relevance to dairy farmers in Scotland.
Projects may concern:
- Health and welfare of dairy animals
- Dairy production, nutrition and systems
- Agronomy and soil science relevant to dairy production
- Socioeconomics of dairy production
- Milk processing and marketing.
Projects should have a research partner based in Scotland, although in exceptional cases this is not essential.
Funding Opportunity: Ofwat Innovation Fund – The Water Breakthrough Challenge 6
Deadline: January 6
Catalyst Stream
Individual entries can bid for £150,000 – £2 million. The lead entrant to Breakthrough 6 must be an appointed ‘Water Company’ (a water and/or sewerage undertaker or infrastructure provider i.e. Tideway) in England and Wales. We strongly encourage lead entrants to enter Breakthrough 6 in partnership or consortia.
For the Catalyst Stream, partners other than the lead entrant can submit the entry form on Submittable.
Funding Opportunity: SMART: Scotland grants
Deadline: Ongoing
The SMART: SCOTLAND grant is one of our research and development (R&D) grants that aims to support high-risk, highly ambitious projects. It provides support to conduct feasibility studies. It’s only available to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) based in Scotland, and supports activities that have a commercial endpoint.
The SMART grant aims to support our priority areas for economic transformation. These are:
- Creating an internationally competitive energy transition industry in Scotland
- Scaling the impact of Scotland’s innovation strengths into high-growth industries of the future
- Driving capital investment to deliver a step-change in Scotland’s productivity
Funding Opportunity: TMAF
Multiple grant opportunities available for:
- Arable research relevant to East Anglia that improves productivity while reducing negative impact on the natural environment.
- PhD projects – in collaboration with other funders and partners.
- Individuals and their continual professional development (CPD) at all levels.
- Initiatives to inform a wide audience – from school age children to adults – about agricultural practices.
Projects that make use of TMAF farms, complement current or previous TMAF-supported projects, contribute long-standing data sets, or offer clear ways to share information and demonstrate results are welcomed.
Opportunity: Industrial Partnership Awards (IPA)
Industrial Partnership Awards (IPA) encourage and support collaboration between academic research groups and industry. IPAs are academic-led, applicant-led mode grants that have significant industrial involvement and industry partners that contribute in cash at least equivalent to 10% of the full project costs.
Applications are assessed by our research committees, alongside standard applications, using the same criteria. IPA projects are normally funded in preference to standard grants of equivalent scientific merit.
If you have any questions about the above funding opportunities or want to find out how we can make your ambitions a reality, get in touch at: [email protected].
These funding opportunities were last updated on 05/11/25
