AI and Automation for Smart Agriculture: Canada–Japan

The focus areas and priorities of this call include AI and automation solutions for agriculture aimed at optimizing processes, predictions, forecasting, efficiency, reducing downtime, minimizing waste, and strengthening resilience across the farm-to-harvest value chain, including crop monitoring and improving crop performance, predictive yield and data utilization, and autonomous labour solutions.

The program supports the development of pre-commercial technologies that apply AI image recognition using drones or satellite data for early identification of crop stress, weeds, and disease indicators, along with tools for optimizing light, water, nutrients, and pest management through advanced approaches. It also emphasizes AI-enabled integration of weather, soil health, crop performance, and management data to support decision-making for crop selection and nutrient management, as well as the development of digital twins for modeling growing cycles in controlled and vertical farming environments. In addition, it encourages robotic harvesters, automated quality grading systems, autonomous farm equipment, drone-based imaging systems, and other related autonomous agricultural technologies.

Eligible projects must be collaborative research and development initiatives formed through a consortium and designed for commercialization, with a project duration ranging between 24 and 36 months.

Each consortium must include a minimum of five participants, consisting of three Canadian participants and two Japanese participants, all contributing to research activities under the National Research Council of Canada’s AI for Productivity Challenge program. The Canadian participants must include one incorporated Canadian small or medium-sized enterprise with 500 or fewer full-time equivalent employees, one researcher from the National Research Council of Canada, and one Canadian research institution such as a post-secondary institution or research and technology organization. The Japanese participants must include one eligible Japanese commercial enterprise and one Japanese research institution. All consortium members must agree to collaborative research terms governing intellectual property and commercialization, and must not be affiliated with entities listed on the Named Research Organization list.

Canadian SME applicants must be incorporated, profit-oriented enterprises in Canada with 500 or fewer full-time equivalent employees and at least 12 months of operation prior to the registration deadline. They must maintain a minimum of five full-time equivalent employees located in Canada on payroll, excluding contract employees, and demonstrate capability to develop and commercialize innovative technology-driven products or services. Applicants must also show financial and operational capacity to undertake international multi-year R&D collaboration while maintaining ongoing operations, along with a commitment to international market expansion. Preference may be given to SMEs with at least 15 full-time equivalent employees in Canada, prior international commercialization experience, and annual sales revenue exceeding 500,000 CAD.

For more information, visit Government of Canada.