2026 Innovation Investment Round

Description

RFx ID: 33161218 Organisation: Ministry for Primary Industries Open date: Wednesday, 10 December 2025 9:00 AM +13:00 Close date: Tuesday, 24 February 2026 2:00 PM +13:00 Categories: 21000000 - Farming and Fishing and Forestry and Wildlife Machinery and Accessories 51000000 - Drugs and Pharmaceutical Products 77000000 - Environmental Services 86000000 - Education and Training Services Region: New Zealand Overview: Both the Ag Emissions Centre (AgEC) and AgriZeroNZ are working to provide New Zealand farmers with a suite of fit for purpose, practical and cost-effective tools to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. During 2025/26, the AgEC and AgriZeroNZ are partnering to run a competitive round to identify and support innovative ideas and opportunities. The AgEC and AgriZeroNZ welcome applications that are seeking to develop novel approaches, and / or significantly strengthen or accelerate current approaches that show major promise for bringing practical, farm-level solutions closer to implementation within a timely manner for New Zealand farmers and growers. As part of this round, ideas are welcomed that seek to overcome barriers to the development, measurement, or delivery of agricultural GHG emissions reduction solutions (this could range from basic science to application of advanced technologies, such as A.I., or include tech transfer from other disciplines). Expressions of Interest (EOI) are sought for projects that address the following research challenges: * Automatic identification of urine patches * Novel low emissions nitrogen fertilizers * Better prediction of in-vivo outcomes from in-vitro methodology * Dietary manipulations with a focus on pasture to reduce agricultural GHG emissions If your ideas don’t fit into the above challenges, we are still interested in submissions if they address: * New/improved approaches to reducing nitrous oxide emissions from ruminant animal deposited urine and/or reducing methane emissions from enteric fermentation that can rapidly bring about a step-change in emissions at scale in grazing ruminants See Appendix A of the guidelines for further information about the research challenges. For this round, we are trialling a new way of attracting ideas. If you have an idea, but don’t have a full team together, you can submit a shorter ‘R&D Idea’ proposal. Full details and guidelines available for download now. Questions and answers will be updated at https://www.ag-emissions.nz/domestic/innovationinvestmentround/