The Technology Strategy Board, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Invest Northern Ireland, the Scottish Funding Council and the Welsh Government, are to invest jointly up to £2.3m to establish Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) to improve the competitiveness, resilience and responsiveness of the agri-food supply chain.
The aim of this initiative is to give businesses access to the UK knowledge base so that they can develop innovative solutions to global challenges facing the agri-food sector.
Its scope spans primary production, including aquaculture, through to retail. This competition will provide new opportunities for open innovation and knowledge exchange across supply chains and sectors. It will help companies to mitigate commercial risk and improve business performance – and to achieve growth as a result.
Project proposals should address at least one of three high-level challenges:
• innovating to benefit consumer health, wellbeing and choice
• improving productivity, resource efficiency and resilience in the supply chain
• assuring safety and security across the supply chain.
Examples of potential project areas include: application of genetic and breeding approaches to crops and livestock; food safety, authenticity and traceability; improved methods to control yield/productivity loss or product quality; improving nutritional quality through better products or ingredients; modern manufacturing methods; technologies, approaches or services which support the sustained modification of consumer or employee behaviours; use of data (e.g. generation and interpretation of large data sets relevant to the agri-food supply chain).
The call opens today (19th June) and will close on 11th Feb 2015.
For further information, read the full competition briefing on the TSB’s ‘innovateuk’ website here, or contact Dominic Collins in Enterprise & Commercial Development: Tel: 01785 353404, email: d.collins@staffs.ac.uk