A £50 million investment in agricultural technology is set to fast-track cutting-edge innovations in the UK, enhancing productivity and sustainability across the sector.

Announced by Farming Minister Dame Angela Eagle, the funding will deliver up to 12 practical tools, ranging from robotics to AI, designed to reduce labour, energy, and fertilizer use while improving resilience and efficiency.

The initiative, backed by £8 million in government funding and £40 million in private investment, focuses on delivering nature-based solutions and scalable technologies to address key challenges in farming.

Among the projects supported are FA Bio’s development of a “living” biopesticide and Rhizocore’s work on native fungi to improve tree survival and carbon capture.

FA Bio’s biopesticide uses beneficial fungi to protect wheat and oilseed rape from pests like aphids and cabbage stem flea beetle. Applied at planting, the biopesticide offers season-long protection while reducing the need for repeated chemical spraying. CEO and Co-Founder of FA Bio, Dr. Angela de Manzanos, emphasized the importance of the funding: “The Investor Partnerships programme enables us to fast-track a biological alternative to chemical insecticides for two of the UK’s most important crops. By aligning public funding with private investment, it supports the commercialisation of biological innovation that reduces reliance on synthetic inputs, protects yields, and improves farm sustainability.”

Rhizocore’s project focuses on identifying native fungi to help trees establish and thrive, improving survival rates in forestry and agroforestry while accelerating carbon capture. Dr. Toby Parkes, Rhizocore’s founder and CEO, highlighted the impact of the funding: “The investor partnership grant will accelerate our data collection on the performance of different fungi in different soil environments. This data will enable us to improve our products by selecting the right fungi for our customers’ sites, resulting in more trees surviving and growing faster, increasing the ROI we return to our customers and the benefit our products provide to the environment.”

The funding is part of the Government’s Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

More from New AG International – our market report 2BMonthly, co-produced with DunhamTrimmer, contained an interview with FA Bio’s Angela de Manzanos in our August 2025 issue.