Funding for agricultural innovators

Over 70 businesses and universities from across the UK have secured a share £16 million from government and industry to develop 25 innovative ideas that should boost UK agriculture.

The 25 projects form the third round of funding to be distributed through the Agri-Tech Catalyst which supports collaborative research between scientists and businesses to springboard projects from the lab to the market place.

Innovations in this round include the “Sunshine Egg” – a project to help reduce vitamin D deficiency in humans by enriching naturally-laid chicken eggs with higher levels of the vitamin via chicken feed, and developing 3D camera technology to identify when broccoli is ready for harvesting. The latter forms a key step towards the development of a fully automatic robotic harvesting system for broccoli, which could significantly reduce production costs.