Key Projects
SUSTAIN PhD Programme – £10.9m
UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Understandable agri-food Systems Transformed by Artificial INtelligence (SUSTAIN).
Data-driven AI can transform food production – reducing greenhouse gas emissions and waste, stabilising supply chains, enhancing plant and animal breeding, and enabling fairer sharing. This requires a new generation of researchers, trained by a PhD programme that combines the expertise of soil, plant and veterinary scientists with that of AI and social scientists – and teaches ethical and sustainable AI delivery. SUSTAIN’s PhD students will emerge ready to translate research into innovative technologies and responsible practices.
HEI Collaborators: Queen’s University Belfast, University of Aberdeen, University of Strathclyde
EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training – £7.6m
With a focus on robotics within the agricultural sector, the Centre provides fully-funded opportunities for students to undertake MSc and PhD study, training them to become the next leaders in the agri-food robotics community.
HEI Collaborators: University of Cambridge and University of East Anglia
LINCAM Ceres Agri-Tech Place-Based Impact Acceleration Account – £4.9m
LINCAM focuses on sustainable growth: enhancing businesses, driving social inclusion, and reducing environmental impacts. LINCAM will catalyse a world-leading AgTech cluster in the Greater Lincolnshire and North Cambridgeshire Fens (LINCAM) AgTech region – accelerating the impact of AgTech emerging from Higher Education Institutes in the UK, and working with civic partners to develop supporting infrastructures, networks and skills.
HEI Collaborators: University of Cambridge
Glasshouse Research Facility – £2.2m
The Glasshouse Research Facility will be a new high-tech glasshouse R&D facility catalysing growth and productivity in Greater Lincolnshire, specifically for businesses developing technologies and processes for the high-value glasshouse horticultural sector. It will trial and demonstrate new products and develop practical solutions to Agri-tech problems, increasing research and innovation to raise overall productivity.
Agri-Tech Global – £1.5m
This project has a vision for a global Agri-Tech cluster for the Greater Lincolnshire and East Anglian region, focusing on international research translation and knowledge exchange methodologies that deliver food system impacts through sustainable growth and foreign direct investment (FDI).
HEI Collaborators: University of Cambridge, Cambridge Enterprise and University of East Anglia
AGRI-OPENCORE – £1.4m
AGRI-OPENCORE will create the world’s first open development platform (software and hardware) for agri-robotic crop harvesting.
Industry lead: APS Produce Limited
NUE-Profits – £943k
From Nitrogen Use Efficiency to Farm Profitability (NUE-Profits) uses plants as sensors to provide farmers with a management tool for better nitrogen utilisation, providing more profit and environmental gains.
Industry lead: AgAnalyst
Qualicrop – £529k
Qualicrop will develop and introduce farm-gate, just-in-time automated crop grading for delicate produce (e.g. strawberries & grapes), adding value for tight-margin growers and ultimately disintermediating an inefficient supply chain, lowering costs to consumers.
Industry lead: Xihelm
ARWAC Attack Blackgrass in Farming – £247k
This project lays the foundation for next-generation robotic vehicles powered by renewable energy and tooled to control blackgrass. It drives productivity and contributes to Net Zero Agriculture by removing fossil fuels from key farming operations.
Industry lead: ARWAK Ltd
FinerForecasts – £212k
FinerForecasts will leverage FruitCast’s ability to quickly and cheaply measure crop state from videos to make plant-level forecasts possible at commercial scales.
Industry lead: FruitCast Ltd
Agaricus – £134k
This project aims to develop the UK’s first intelligent mushroom picking robotic system that offers improved productivity, de-risked labour availability, increased yield and reduced food waste.
Industry lead: Agaricus Robotics Ltd