Dyson Farming Accelerates Innovative Potato Projects With Defra Funding

Dyson Farming Research aims to deliver sustainable and profitable potato farming opportunities for the UK after securing funding for two promising projects through Defra's Innovate UK-managed ADOPT programme.

Image: Dyson Farming

The first initiative is designed to transform potato production into a more sustainable, higher‑value dual-purpose crop for UK agriculture; while the other will evaluate the potential of biostimulants to enhance crop productivity and resilience.

Dual Crop For Food And Fibre

In the first instance, Dyson Farming will lead a new “exciting” initiative to explore potatoes as a dual crop for food and fibre, the company said in a news statement.

This project builds on pioneering and “extremely promising” work by Fibe, a London-based material science company which has demonstrated that potato stems are a viable source of high‑quality textile fibre. 

By supplying potato stems – a harvesting by‑product – to Fibr, Dyson Farming said growers could turn crop waste into a valuable raw material.

Dyson Farming explained that this would save growers operational costs, improve the sustainability profile of potato production, and enable farmers to become essential contributors to a greener, UK‑based fibre industry.

Already, the innovation has attracted strong interest from the fashion and materials sector, which is actively seeking new, sustainable sources of fibre that reduce reliance on environmentally intensive materials. 

With ADOPT funding, Dyson Farming Research will now work with Sentry Farms, NIAB, and Fibe to evaluate stem harvesting under real farm conditions to give growers the confidence that stem removal has no negative impact on tuber quality.

Biostimulant Potential

Alongside this, Dyson Farming is aiming to use new Innovate UK funding to bring clarity to the biostimulant market. 

Through the ADOPT programme, Dyson Farming will deliver the BioStim Review – a landmark, farmer‑led project that will provide the UK’s first independent, large‑scale comparative evaluation of biostimulants for wheat and potato crops. 

“Biostimulants are increasingly promoted for their potential to enhance crop resilience, nutrient uptake, and yield,” the company said in a news statement. 

“Yet, despite widespread interest, UK farmers continue to face a major challenge: a lack of unbiased, side‑by‑side evidence showing which products genuinely work, under what conditions, and to what extent. The BioStim Review project directly addresses this gap.”

Led by Dyson Farming Research in partnership with Velcourt, the two-year project will test a wide range of commercially available biostimulants across five commercial farm sites representing diverse soils, climates and cropping systems. 

Trials will be carried out using standardised protocols, precision agriculture tools, and robust statistical methods to ensure that the findings are scientifically rigorous and practically relevant. 

All results will be published openly to benefit growers, agronomists, researchers and manufacturers across the industry.