SBRI: Plant health innovations for biosecurity

To lead a project, you can be an organisation of any size including:

• a registered business, charity, or Non-Governmental Organisation
• a research organisation eligible for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding

You can work alone or with subcontracted or non-funded organisations as collaborators, such as solution developers and real-world solution users. Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £20,000 and £150,000, inclusive of VAT
• start between 1 April 2024 and 1 October 2024
• end by 31 March 2025
• last between 3 and 12 months
• intend to exploit results from and within the United Kingdom

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service.

This competition aims to accelerate the effective development of innovative solutions, technologies, or practices that enhance plant health and biosecurity activities, with a focus on regulated pests, diseases and future operational deployment.

Your project can deliver innovation focused research activities to progress solutions towards one or more of the challenges listed for this competition. This can include establishing the feasibility of an idea, to demonstrating principle, or developing a prototype.

Your project outputs will be expected to outline quantitative potential improvements in effectiveness or efficiency savings of your solution.

Projects which address the challenges by exploring a biological question or applying bioscience or biotechnology to advance the needs of solution users are encouraged.

Your project must demonstrate:

• the development and operational feasibility of innovative technologies or practices
• how you have taken the needs of intended users into consideration in your product or service development
• a credible and practical route to use in an operational environment and commercialisation
• knowledge transfer and exchange between the solution providers and solution users

We encourage collaboration and co-design between solution developers and real-world solution users. This can include a solutions provider working with UK horticultural, forestry, agricultural growers, importers and exporters of plants and plant products, or working directly with the UK Plant Health Service Inspectorate.

Your project must focus on one or more of the following challenges and be applicable to regulated plant pests and diseases:

• developing innovative technologies and practices to enhance border inspections of traded plants for planting and plant commodities, including wood and wood products, improving sampling accuracy, detection rates of regulated pests, time and resource efficiency of inspectors
• enhancing in-land inspections of plants in nurseries, recently planted sites or the wider environment, through the application of innovative technologies and practices to enable pest and pathogen detection in the field, reducing the risk of outbreaks
• utilising passive and scanning surveillance approaches to provide timely and cost-effective methods for detecting pests and diseases in different landscape settings
• managing the supply of potentially infected or infested plants and plant commodities pre and post border, presenting alternative treatments to destruction following detection of a quarantine organism, reducing financial losses whilst maintaining biosecurity

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing at 12:30pm on Thursday 23 November: click here for the joining link.

If you would like help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Agrifood or Biotechnology teams.