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START Fund

The Teagasc START Fund is an annual internal research fund, offering the opportunity to Teagasc researchers to avail of up to €15,000 for a 6-month project to aid in early-stage assessment of concepts and ground-breaking innovations with commercial potential. The START Fund aims to support the development of early-stage commercialisation projects that may in time form new spin-out companies.

The successful teams that have received funding through the competitive START fund calls are drawn from across Teagasc research centres.

START Fund Winners

2021 Winners

2022 Winners

2023 Winners

If you are a Teagasc researcher and you have a technology or concept you would like to explore, please contact engage@teagasc.ie to find out more

Ryegrass hybrid breeding service

Susanne Barth, Sergei Kushnir & Ewen Mullins

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, Dublin

Perennial ryegrass is the key forage species in temperate grasslands as it is the basis for meat and milk production and is the major forage seed sold for permanent pastures.   95% of all forage grass seed sold in Ireland is perennial ryegrass.

Bespoke Fermented Foods (BFFs)

Paul Cotter & John Leech

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy

The project is exploring the provision of fermented foods rich in tailor-made microbial communities with optimised, targeted health and wellness benefits. Teagasc’s international reputation in this field will allow the team to build an entire science-based, market-driven brand around these foods.

VisioBot

Norah O’Shea

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy

The bespoke collaborative robotic and vision system platform technology provides a robust and consistent quality control methodology for evaluating reconstitution properties of powdered nutritional products.

Pet Aging and Wellness (PAW) products:

Maria Hayes & Paula O’ Connor

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, Dublin & Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy

PAW products is a novel fish protein hydrolysate ingredient produced and formulated using Teagasc patented technology that can be fed to pets to help to prevent high blood pressure, weight gain and potentially inflammation. The target market is the functional ingredients for pets including the pet treat market.

BioHealth Products

Maria Hayes &  Emer Shannon

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, Dublin

This invention includes generation and identification of a novel functional food ingredient from an edible seaweed for use as a prebiotic (‘food for gut bacteria’) to enhance gut health.   The target markets that this technology addresses is the Functional ingredients for human market, immune health and the animal feed prebiotic market.

ProSwine - Mapping a path to market for a novel probiotic feed additive for pigs

Peadar Lawlor, Prof Gillian Gardiner, Dr Ruth Rattigan

Location: Teagasc Animal & Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, Teagasc, Moorepark

ProSwine is a technology that reduces the need for antibiotic interventions. The market entry strategy is to target the animal feed additive sector, valued at at US$ 40 Billion in 2021.

Clean Green Packaging

Shivani Pathania

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, Dublin

This project seeks to optimise a semi-automatic machine with gas flush capabilities for clean green packaging of ready to eat/heat food products.  This represents a commercial opportunity to develop and commercialise clean and green packaging solutions for small food manufacturers.

ALPACA Bio

Prof. Paul Cotter and Miguel Fernandez de Ullivarri

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy and University College Cork

The team have developed novel anti-infective therapies, including antimicrobial peptides as safe therapeutics to fight antimicrobial resistance and diverse infectious diseases.

SOLAS

Karen Daly

Location: Teagasc Environment Research Centre, Johnstown Castle, Co. Wexford

The SOLAS unique analysis methodologies have the potential to provide cost and time savings without loss of accuracy for soil analysis. This provides an effective mechanism for technology adoption at national scale in future soil monitoring as provided for in the draft EU Soil Monitoring Law (EC, 2023).

Milkybiotics

Rita Hickey

Location: Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark, Fermoy

The Milkybiotics technology has shown to significantly increase attachment of probiotic bacteria in the gut through use of IgG from milk sources to modulate the intestinal cell surface. further development of this technology could potentially revolutionise the gut health product sector.