Ministry for Primary Industries

2026 Innovation Investment Round - Round 2

The AgEC and AgriZeroNZ invite Expressions of Interest (EoI) from innovators worldwide to develop transformative agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation solutions or substantially advance emerging technologies with the potential to deliver practical, farm-level outcomes for New Zealand farmers and growers. Preference will be given to proposals that explore novel concepts, mechanisms, or technologies beyond well-established research areas and demonstrate a credible pathway to emissions reduction, adoption, and deployment at scale within a commercially relevant timeframe.

As part of this round, ideas are welcomed that specifically address the following research challenges:
1) the development of biological and soil-management technologies that reduce N₂O emissions by both enhancing N₂O consumption (reduction of N₂O to dinitrogen, N₂) and preventing the accumulation of nitrite (NO₂⁻), a key precursor of N₂O formation. Technologies must be able to be applied at scale and suitable for NZ pastoral systems i.e., nitrous oxide emissions from urine patches.
2) the development of robust, routine in situ approaches for quantifying the key intermediaries and processes governing N₂O emissions under urine patch conditions. This includes accurate measurement of N₂ production and/or nitrous oxide reductase (nosZ) activity, as well as nitrite formation, pool sizes, and concentration dynamics.

3) If your idea doesn’t fit into one of the above challenges, we are still interested in submissions if they address novel approaches to reducing nitrous oxide emissions from ruminant animal deposited urine and/or methane emissions from enteric fermentation that can rapidly bring about a step-change in emissions at scale in grazing ruminants, and where investment could accelerate or unblock barriers to commercialisation.

The two step tending process is open to New Zealand and international organisations to apply. Co-funding in strongly encouraged. Organisations can submit a full proposal or for ideas that are focussed on feasibility and may not have a full team assembled yet, a ideas proposal can be submitted. See the guidelines for more information.

Please review guidelines.

Questions can be submitted to innovation@ag-emissions.nz and a an FAQ document will be kept updated and available to view at www.ag-emissions.nz/innovation

Please submit responses to innovation@ag-emissions.nz. No hard copy is required.

Department/Business Unit: Agriculture and Investment Services