New opportunities available to solve AgriFood challenges
We round up the latest opportunities to help AgriFood challenge holders connect with solution providers.
Referred to as ‘open innovation’, these opportunities involve looking outside your own team or knowledge base to explore new ideas.
As an innovator, open innovation platforms can help you find new applications and connections to expand the impact of your ideas. As a company with a challenge, sharing this openly can help you find new solutions.
Publicising challenges in an open forum can be a speedy route for companies to connect with innovators they wouldn’t otherwise have been aware of. Talking about your challenges or needs may enable you to access ideas from sectors outside of your own. This could accelerate your problem-solving or product-development process.
If you’re working in AgriFood and have a particular challenge or solution that could help others working in your industry, explore companies with upcoming open innovation challenges below.
Current open innovation challenges
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- Seeking: Chemical building blocks derived from biomass waste streams
Closing Date: 31 May 2024 - Sourcing novel seaweed species for biostimulants
Closing Date: 30 September 2024 - Novel microalgae strains, extracts, and byproducts for agriculture
Closing Date: 30 September 2024 - Seeking: Bird repellents for crops
Closing Date: 31 May 2024 - Tools to detect non-visible indicators of poor agronomic performance
Closing Date: 31 May 2024
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- Seeking: Chemical building blocks derived from biomass waste streams
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- Regenerative agriculture and positive action on nature
Closing Date: Not listed - Non animal derived alternatives (such as dairy)
Closing Date: Not listed
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- Regenerative agriculture and positive action on nature
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- Modular Hydrogel Reactors for Sustainable Horticulture: A Peat Alternative
Closing Date: 10 May 2024
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- Modular Hydrogel Reactors for Sustainable Horticulture: A Peat Alternative
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- Natural Colors for Foods & Beverages
Closing Date: Not listed - Soil health solutions- to identify and validate microbiome technologies
Closing Date: Not listed - Reducing GHG Emissions
Closing Date: Not listed
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- Natural Colors for Foods & Beverages
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- Nematode Detection
Closing Date: Not listed - AI/Gen AI – Sustainability
Closing Date: Not listed
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- Nematode Detection
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- Saturated fat substitutes
Closing Date: Not listed
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- Saturated fat substitutes
In addition to the companies listed above, Diageo has new challenges opening in late 2024, while Nomad Foods regularly launches new challenges.
Innovation Exchange
Innovate UK Innovation Exchange is a good example of open innovation working in practice. It fast-tracks knowledge transfer nationwide by matching industry challenges with trailblazing companies across different sectors. It regularly hosts challenges relevant to AgriFood. The Innovation Exchange team works with challenge holders to define their challenge and disseminate this to find solutions from a range of sectors.
Get in touch with the Innovate UK Business Connect AgriFood team to find out more, or explore all our open opportunities.
Related programme
Innovation Exchange
Innovate UK Innovation Exchange is a cross-sector programme supporting innovation transfer by matching industry challenges to innovative companies from other sectors. It does this by putting large businesses with technical needs in contact with companies who have the right innovative solutions, for faster development of novel solutions.