Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network 2020 Funding Calls

A new 3-year, £500K Network is being established to tackle food waste and to improve quality in horticultural and potato crops.

Are you a researcher or working within the UK Horticulture industry?

Are you an Early Career Researcher?

Are you interested in UK Horticultural Crop Quality and Food Loss?

Do you have an interest and innovative ideas or solutions for improving food quality and reducing food loss for Vegetable, Fruit and Potato crops?

The Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network is providing a range of funding opportunities to its members, including pump-priming funds for feasibility studies and preliminary data collection to facilitate new collaborations (with emphasis on industry involvement and multidisciplinary) including ring-fenced funds for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), Business Interaction Vouchers (BIV) and Networking Visit Funding (NVF).

A total of £300K will be allocated over the next three years through a competitive transparent process. The awarding of funding is subject to applicants satisfying the Network’s Terms and Conditions.

The ‘Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network’ led jointly by the University of Reading and Cranfield University is funded by UKRI’s BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) and supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 to reduce food waste and losses by 50% by 2030.

The Aim

To act as the leading collective voice for the UK horticultural and postharvest community.

Key objectives:

• To coordinate and strengthen links between academia and industry
• To attract a new cohort of early career researchers to address quality and food loss
• To provide funds to help engage new investigators with industrial partners
• To commission a diverse range of collaborative research projects
• To pump-prime new collaborations between businesses and academics

Further details of the types of funding available can be found on the Network website.