Agri-Tech Global is a partnership between the Universities of Lincoln, Cambridge and East Anglia, Cambridge Enterprise and Ceres Agri-Tech with the aim to develop a truly global agri-tech cluster in the Greater Lincolnshire and East Anglia region.

The Agri-Tech Global collaboration has received an award of £1.49 million as part of the Research England Development (RED) and Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).  The funding will allow for the networking and growth of agri-tech start-ups in the region and enable them to connect with larger international agricultural and tech businesses.

Agri-Tech Global will also tackle the serious challenges faced by the industry from climate change to rising food prices and pressures within the supply chain.

Agri-Tech Global builds on the original Ceres agri-tech, the LINCAM Place Based Impact Accelerator, the Eastern England Agri-Tech and Food Tech Launchpad and CDTs led by Lincoln, to create another strand of activity focused on internationalisation.  Agri-Tech Global has £1.5m of funding to support international links and has two streams of project funding:

Agri-Tech Global is heavily focused on research translation and will support academic teams from the three partner universities to develop and commercialise their agri-tech innovations using the established Ceres Agri-Tech model.

It will support impact delivery for plant agri-tech technologies, e.g. plant or crop sciences, as well as robotics, chemistry, computer science etc, which support the crop-based production sector and its supply chains in Lincolnshire and the East of England.

Projects must be internationally collaborative, preferably with Universities or businesses from the US, Australia and the Netherlands. A secondary aim of the programme is to build international links to enhance the economy and society in the Greater Lincolnshire and East Anglian region.

Dr Louise Sutherland, Ceres Agri-Tech Director, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to evolve Ceres Agri-tech from a UK to an international network.  Agri-tech Global was formally launched in California with our key partners Western Growers and SVG Thrive.  We look forward to collaborating with international partners to help exploit the global agri-tech opportunity for our universities and the region”.

For more information on the programme please visit: Ceres Agri-Tech (ceresagritech.org).