The department for business, innovation and skills is set to inject £13 million of R&D funding to develop crop protection as the industry looks to tackle the legislation on pesticides brought in by the European Parliament.

The collaborative fund, which will be formally announced at Innovate '09 - a Technology Strategy Board (TSB) event on October 13 - will be used to help growers deal with new and existing EU regulations on pesticide approval and use.

The fund will cover horticulture, grass, biofuel and arable crops, with £7m from the TSB and £2.5m from the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, with DEFRA adding a further £3.5m.

Applications for the projects, which can last up to five years, will be accepted from January 18, 2010, with the deadline on April 29 and decisions made on June 4.

National Farmers’ Union plant health adviser Paul Chambers told freshinfo it remains to be seen whether the fund is large enough. He said: “We are very pleased at the additional money that could help tackle the problems that currently exist and could do in the future with crop protection.

“The UK food chain worked together well, with full support from the government, in opposing the European legislation and getting across our concerns that it could severely affect crop production, so it’s no surprise they are helping to find a solution in this.

“We don’t yet know whether it will be enough, but we need to ensure efforts are co-ordinated to prevent duplication of research.

“We are already down to the bare bones of products we can use for horticulture as it is… residue work is very expensive, so we will need all the funding we can get as an industry.”

The European legislation is set to formally be implemented in 2011, however, many active ingredients will not come up for review for at least two years.