Canada–Japan 3+2 Call on AI and Automation for Agriculture 2026: Up to ¥58.5 Million per Japanese Team and CAD $600,000 per Canadian SME, With Canadian Registration Closing 26 August 2026

Canada–Japan 3+2 Call on AI and Automation for Agriculture 2026: Up to ¥58.5 Million per Japanese Team and CAD $600,000 per Canadian SME, With Canadian Registration Closing 26 August 2026

The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) opened a joint call on 24 July 2026 for collaborative research that puts artificial intelligence, robotics and automation to work on agricultural productivity and resilience. It runs under JST’s Strategic International Collaborative Research Program (SICORP), which is JST’s standing instrument for bilateral research partnerships, and on the Canadian side through NRC’s international collaborative calls administered alongside NRC IRAP.

What makes this call unusual is its structure. Most bilateral research calls ask for a university on each side. This one asks for a five-party consortium — three Canadian participants and two Japanese participants, which is where the “3+2” name comes from — and it deliberately mixes companies, academic institutions and an NRC staff researcher into a single team. The design goal is stated plainly in JST’s announcement: build an international industry–academia structure and move the research development closer to implementation. This is not a call for early-stage exploratory science.

About three projects are expected to be funded.

Key Details

What the Money Actually Covers

The two funders pay their own nationals under their own rules, which is standard for SICORP but worth internalising early because the two envelopes are shaped very differently.

On the Japanese side, a successful team receives up to ¥58.5 million in commissioned research funding for one project across three years. That ceiling already includes indirect costs, which JST sets at 30% of direct costs — so the direct research budget available is meaningfully smaller than the headline figure. One genuinely useful flexibility: JST lets the Japanese team decide internally how the money is divided between the company and the academic partner. There is no imposed split. That means the Japanese company and university need to negotiate their own allocation before submitting, and a lopsided split that does not match the described workplan will read badly to reviewers.

On the Canadian side the structure is a cost-share for companies and full funding for institutions. A Canadian SME can receive up to CAD $600,000, but not as a flat grant: salary costs are supported at 80%, contractor fees at 50%, and international travel at 75%. The SME carries the remainder. Canadian research institutions are treated differently — up to CAD $100,000 per year per consortium at 100% of eligible costs, with indirect costs capped at 10%.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the Canadian SME needs real working capital, which is why NRC requires a cash-flow projection as part of the application package. Second, the contractor-fee rate of 50% makes it expensive to outsource the core technical work; teams that plan to subcontract most of the build should reconsider the structure or accept a much thinner effective budget.

Who This Fits

The consortium requirement is strict and is the single most common reason a team will be unable to apply, so check it before doing anything else.

Three Canadian participants are required: one incorporated SME with 500 or fewer employees, one NRC researcher, and one Canadian research institution. Two Japanese participants are required: one eligible Japanese commercial enterprise and one Japanese research institution. That is five parties minimum, and all of them must be unrelated — no affiliated entities dressed up as independent partners. NRC also requires that no participant be affiliated with an organisation on Canada’s Named Research Organizations list.

The requirement to include an NRC researcher is the part most teams underestimate. You cannot simply name an NRC scientist; you need a real working relationship and their agreement to participate, and NRC has published an information-session recording and slide deck specifically to help teams identify which NRC researchers work in relevant areas. If you do not already have an NRC contact, that recording is the fastest legitimate route in.

The call fits best if you are a Canadian agri-tech SME with a working prototype and a Japanese counterpart with complementary hardware, sensing or data assets — or the mirror image. It fits poorly if you are a single-country team hoping to find partners at the last minute, or a purely academic group with no commercial participant.

Research Scope

NRC names three priority areas within the general theme of using AI and automation to optimise agricultural processes, predictions and forecasting:

• Crop monitoring. AI image recognition — from drones and satellites — for early identification of crop stress, weeds and disease indicators.
• Predictive yield. Data integration that supports informed crop and nutrient management decisions.
• Autonomous labour. Robotic harvesters, automated grading, and drone technologies.

JST’s framing adds that projects should advance optimisation of production processes, crops and systems, plus risk-predictive analytics. Read together, the two descriptions point at applied systems that touch a real farm or a real supply chain, not at benchmark improvements on public datasets. A proposal that ends at “we improved detection accuracy by four points” without a deployment story is misaligned with the stated intent to move development closer to implementation.

The Application Process, Step by Step

There are four stages, and the Canadian side gates the whole thing.

1. Registration (Canada, by 26 August 2026). The Canadian lead applicant registers electronically through the NRC call page. This is the first hard cut-off, and it arrives weeks before anything is due in Japan.
2. Expression of Interest (Canada, by 9 September 2026). The Canadian lead submits an EOI form to NRC. NRC screens the EOIs.
3. International Consortium Project Proposal (both sides, by 30 November 2026). After clearing the EOI review, the Canadian lead submits the joint ICPP and the remaining Canadian forms to NRC. In parallel, the Japanese lead registers and uploads the Japanese application forms as a PDF through e-Rad by 17:00 Japan time on the same date.
4. National funding agreements. Successful participants complete contracting independently with their respective agencies. Japanese institutions contract with JST under JST’s standard commissioned-research contract terms.

JST states this bluntly and it deserves repeating: applications are required on both sides. A proposal filed only in Japan, or only in Canada, will not be reviewed at all.

Required Materials

Canada: the International Consortium Project Proposal; the NRC IRAP SME annex form; the NRC NPO researcher annex form; a signed NRC Research Security Requirements Attestation form; and a cash-flow projection for the SME participant.

Japan: the Japanese application forms submitted through e-Rad, which include a declaration of any other grants or subsidies held, a legal-compliance checklist, and a confirmation letter from the head of the applicant institution.

That confirmation letter carries a trap JST calls out explicitly. It requires the seal of the head of the institution — for a university, the president, not a faculty dean or department head. Getting a presidential seal routed through a Japanese university’s administration is not a same-week task. Posting the original by mail is not required, and institutions that omit the physical seal must follow their own internal substitute procedure, but either route needs lead time.

Two further Japanese requirements are worth flagging. The Japanese principal investigator must have completed a research ethics education programme; if completion cannot be verified, the application is treated as deficient. And first-time e-Rad users must register in advance — JST warns that registration can take more than two weeks, which means an e-Rad account started in late November is already too late.

Timeline and How to Pace It

Working backwards from 30 November 2026, the real schedule is tighter than it looks:

• By 25 August 2026 — if you still need partners, send a team-introduction presentation to NRC at IRAP.International.Forms-Formulaires.international.PARI@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca for posting to the shared materials folder. This is a separate, earlier deadline from registration.
• 26 August 2026 — Canadian registration closes. Miss this and the consortium is out, regardless of how strong the science is.
• 9 September 2026 — Canadian EOI due.
• September–November 2026 — EOI review, then joint drafting of the ICPP. Start the Japanese institutional seal request and confirm e-Rad accounts during this window, not after.
• 30 November 2026, 17:00 JST — everything due on both sides.
• By June 2027 — funded projects must begin.
• By March 2030 at the latest — projects must conclude.

Preparation Strategy and Common Mistakes

Treat 26 August as the deadline. The date most teams will circle is 30 November. The date that actually decides whether you can compete is 26 August 2026. If your consortium is not assembled in the next few weeks, this cycle is likely out of reach.

Watch the info-session recording before contacting NRC. NRC published a recording at https://youtu.be/B59wEg4_erg and a slide folder covering the call’s requirements and the specialisms of participating NRC researchers. Approaching an NRC scientist with a specific, informed proposal is far more effective than a general enquiry.

Do not treat the five-party requirement as a formality. Reviewers assessing a call built explicitly around industry–academia integration will look for evidence that each of the five parties has a distinct, necessary role. A partner added purely to satisfy the count — with a token budget line and no described contribution — weakens the proposal rather than saving it.

Budget the two envelopes coherently. The Japanese and Canadian budgets are prepared under different rules but describe one project. Reviewers on both sides will see the whole. Cost-share arithmetic that leaves the Canadian SME with an implausible contribution, or a Japanese split that does not match the workplan, is a self-inflicted problem.

Build the deployment story. Both agencies describe implementation as the point. Name the crops, the growing conditions, the farms or processors involved, and what a successful demonstration would look like by 2029.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a Canadian team apply without a Japanese partner? No. The consortium composition is a hard eligibility requirement, and submission is required on both sides.

Is the ¥58.5 million per year? No. It is the maximum total across the three-year project for the Japanese team, and it already includes indirect costs at 30% of direct costs.

Can a large Canadian company participate as the SME? No. The Canadian SME must be incorporated with 500 or fewer employees.

Can the Japanese company and university split the JST funding however they like? Yes. JST leaves the allocation to the Japanese team, provided it is consistent with the proposed work.

What if we miss the 9 September EOI deadline? There is no described route to the November proposal stage without clearing the EOI gate, so a missed EOI ends the application for this cycle.

Where do the announcements live? The Canadian call page is at nrc.canada.ca (linked below); JST’s Japanese-language announcement is at https://www.jst.go.jp/inter/program/announce/announce_ca_ai2026.html. Where details differ in emphasis, confirm with the agency that funds your side.

Official Links and Contacts

• NRC call page (English, includes registration, EOI and forms): https://nrc.canada.ca/en/irap/about/international/?action=view&id=289
• JST SICORP announcement (Japanese, includes Japanese forms and e-Rad guidance): https://www.jst.go.jp/inter/program/announce/announce_ca_ai2026.html
• Information session recording: https://youtu.be/B59wEg4_erg
• e-Rad (Japanese submission system): https://www.e-rad.go.jp/
• JST commissioned research contract documentation: https://www.jst.go.jp/contract/index2.html

For Canadian SME enquiries, contact Harvey Lam, NRC IRAP Japan Program Lead, at [email protected]. For Canadian research participants and NRC researcher involvement, contact [email protected]. For Japanese enquiries, contact JST’s International Affairs Department, Program Implementation Group, at [email protected].

Facts above are drawn from the NRC call page and JST’s SICORP announcement dated 24 July 2026. Deadlines and funding rules are set by the agencies and can be revised; confirm both pages before you commit resources, and confirm with the agency funding your side of the consortium if the two descriptions appear to diverge.