Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and BBSRC, UK wish to encourage multi-institutional collaborative applications between UK and Indian researchers to undertake high quality three-year projects aimed at increasing the productivity, resilience, sustainability and quality of pulses or oilseeds grown for food or feed in India. 

The call aims to use genomic approaches to accelerate varietal improvement by understanding and exploiting traits to enhance yield potential, increase tolerance to climatic stresses or poor-quality soils, or counter pests or diseases. The funders will support the development and exploitation of new genomic and associated bioinformatic resources, but existing resources should also be used where relevant, particularly for comparative studies.

UK Participants
Standard BBSRC managed mode eligibility conditions apply to this call. All UK applicants must be eligible to receive research funding from BBSRC as Principal/Co-Investigator; see the BBSRC Grants Guide.

Indian Participants
Applicants should ensure that Indian participants fulfil the eligibility requirements for DBT funding. For this call, DBT will fund eligible researchers in Indian universities and eligible autonomous institutions, institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and the CGIAR’s International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. 

Indian applicants should confirm their eligibility to apply with Dr Sanjay Kalia (sanjay.​kalia@​nic.​in) at DBT.

Principal Investigators are responsible for ensuring that they, and any Co-Investigators included on the application, are eligible. Applications involving any ineligible applicants (UK or India) will result in the whole application being rejected.

The following BBSRC schemes will not apply to this call: New Investigator; Industrial Partnership Awards and Industrial LINK. BBSRC will not fund studentships as part of this
call.

The lead UK Principal Investigator should submit a single joint application to BBSRC on behalf of all participants using the Je‑S system. Applications may involve researchers from multiple eligible UK institutions, but should be submitted as a single Je‑S application submitted by the organisation of the lead UK Principal Investigator. If successful, the lead organisation would be the recipient of the UK component of the award, and would be responsible for managing and distributing funds to other participating UK institutions in accordance with the terms and conditions of the award. Funding for the Indian component of the collaboration will be paid by DBT to the Indian partner institution(s).

How to submit your application
1. Log in to your Je‑S account.
2. From the left hand menu, select Documents.
3. Under functions on the Main Menu, select Create New Document.
4. In the Add New Document screen:
a. Select Council: BBSRC
b. Select document type: Standard Proposal
c. Select scheme: Newton Fund
d. Select Call / Type Mode: Newton Fund Pulses and Oilseeds Research
Initiative
e. Select: Create Document
The Je‑S form should be completed in the standard way using the guidance and help text
available in the Je‑S system. All aspects of the proposal submitted to BBSRC via Je‑S
should be jointly developed by, and submitted on behalf of, the entire international
consortium. Please also note the following guidance which is specific to this call:
5. The start date of the grant should be 01 July 2018.
6. The Other Support section is required for this application. If there is no other support,
please tick the box indicating ​“not relevant to the application”.
7. Proposal classifications are non-mandatory fields and should be completed as follows:
a. Research Area – Please choose at least one from the list available
b. Qualifiers – Please leave this section blank.
c. Free-text Keywords – Please identify at least five (and a maximum of eight) keywords relevant to the project.

The deadline for applications is 24 October 2017, 16:00 BST/15:00 GMT.