The Innovate UK BridgeAI programme is designed to help UK businesses adopt and implement artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The programme aims to help businesses in four high-growth potential sectors to harness the power of AI and unlock their full potential, one of which is agriculture and food processing, with the other three being construction, creative and transport.

Alongside our Bridge AI partners, The Alan Turing Institute, Digital Catapult, The Hartree Centre and The British Standards Institute, the programme offers the following opportunities:

• Funding and Support: Providing financial assistance and expert guidance.
• AI Adoption Framework: A structured guide to help businesses navigate the AI adoption process, covering strategy, data preparation, model building, and implementation.
• Training and Upskilling: Offering resources to enhance AI knowledge and skills, including short videos and training courses.
• Collaboration Opportunities: Connecting businesses with AI experts and fostering innovation through partnerships.
• Ethical AI Practices: Focusing on responsible AI use, emphasizing transparency, data privacy, and ethical considerations.

AgriFood AI Projects

Since the start of the programme in 2023, the Innovate UK funding competitions have supported more than 40 projects from the Agrifood sector. These have been from a wide variety of Agrifood areas, including crops, livestock, aquaculture, horticulture, Controlled Environment Agriculture and Food processing. Below are some examples of projects that have been funded.

Blacksheep Technology Limited have created an innovative platform called FlockFinder, which uses Generative AI technologies that will be able to identify underlying illness/disease from observed symptoms. Livestock diseases apply constant pressure to sheep profitability by increasing labour and medicine use and decreasing productivity. Timely and accurate diagnosis will help reduce livestock disease, increase animal welfare, and ultimately improve farm performance and profitability. The annual cost of sheep diseases such as lameness, abortion, ectoparasites, intestinal parasites, and liver fluke exceeds £400 million to the UK sheep farming industry. This technology will improve farmers’ livelihoods as well as support the broader rural economy.

Zest (formerly The Wonki Collective) is on a mission to eradicate supply chain food waste. This project sees world-leading brands and food charities coming together to pilot a first-of-a-kind AI solution to identify and redistribute the equivalent of up to 1.5 million surplus meals over the 9-month period of the pilots (July 2025 until March 2026). Meals are coming from surplus produced across the supply chain. Zest are starting with finished packaged goods, then moving to work in progress (WIP – which is basically production by products such as 25kg bags of loose cereal that’s perfectly good to eat but doesn’t pass the size quality test to fit into branded packs) and ingredient surplus. 40% of the food that’s produced never makes it to a supermarket shelf. This consortium will enable food manufacturers to optimise surplus reallocation, improving end-to-end identification, tracking and intelligent optimisation of surplus.

They’re utilising AI/ML technology to enable data-sharing between large food processors (Nestle UK&I), buyers (including charities or other food manufacturers(FareShare)), and logistics providers (Howard Tenens Logistics and Bristol Superlight) to optimise and automate the identification, tracking, management, and intelligent redistribution of food, reducing waste and keeping more food in the food system. This will address the traceability, supply, demand, and transport challenges across a very complex supply chain.

Messium is using artificial intelligence and deep learning on hyperspectral remote sensing data to assess nutrient requirements in crops, starting with nitrogen in wheat.

Nitrogen is the most important nutrient for farmers, influencing yield and profitability, and accounting for 57% of total fertiliser use. Regular application is essential for increasing crop development, and yet it remains difficult for farmers to calculate the optimal dose and the optimal timing.

This project will help farmers know exactly when their crops have too much or too little nitrogen, allowing them to optimise nutrient supply efficiently. Without this insight, farmers risk growing under-fertilised crops, thus losing both yield and grain protein, or severely over-fertilised crops, leading to wasted fertiliser usage, and thus unnecessary costs, and potential nitrate leaching and nitrous oxide emissions that have serious detrimental environmental effects.

The resulting model will act as an early alert system, giving farmers the opportunity to make course corrections in nitrogen application during the growing season, enabling the farm to maximise yield and grain protein, and thus maximise profits while minimising environmental impact.

Authors: Debbie Tully, Knowledge Transfer Manager – Food and Caroline Griffin, Knowledge Transfer Manager, AgriFood – Livestock and Aquaculture at Innovate UK Business Connect.

Contact us

There are a variety of opportunities available from the BridgeAI programme for businesses in the AgriFood sector. If you are interested in being introduced to AI technology or industry partners, then please contact Caroline Griffin or Debbie Tully. If you are interested in being introduced to any of our BridgeAI partners (Digital Catapult, The Alan Turing Institute, The Hartree Centre or BSI), then please get in touch.