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 rather than as a co-operative. You must still collaborate with others.

You can 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)

No single organisation can claim more than 70% of the total project costs.

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.

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.

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

Any research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 60% of the total eligible project costs between them. 100% of these costs can be covered (80% FEC for academic institutions).

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.

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

• agriculture
• horticulture
• agro-forestry

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

Defra have released pre-recorded briefings for this competition: watch the scope recording and watch the process recording.

The ADOPT Support Hub, run by ADAS, has been commissioned to work on ADOPT and they can support applicants and funded projects throughout their journey.

They can:

• act as the first point of contact for the applicant providing advice on scope, suitability or on-farm trial practicalities
• help form connections finding expertise, partners and capabilities necessary for an application
• provide and promote standards on best practice for on-farm R&D
• support the exchange of information and outputs from funded projects to share amongst farmers to enable broad knowledge exchange and dissemination

Email: adoptsupport@adas.co.uk or call 0800 987 8006. The Support Hub line is open from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

You can also contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Agrifood team for advice.