Ukraine's agricultural research system is under extraordinary pressure. This project puts practical experimentation back in the field, turns evidence into decisions farmers can use, and creates a pathway from research plots to commercial farms.
Trial design · 2026
We designed the trials around two very different agricultural realities: productive Forest-Steppe farmland in Kyiv Oblast and war-affected, drought-prone soil in the Southern Steppe.
Kyiv
Productive Forest-Steppe conditions, fertile soil and more regular rainfall. The site allowed us to compare resource-efficient practices under mainstream agricultural conditions.
Mykolaiv
Hotter, drought-prone Southern Steppe conditions on land affected by war. The site tested whether the same innovation toolkit could contribute to restoring agricultural productivity after humanitarian clearance.
The work tests reduced tillage, biological products, biochar and approaches to restoring war-damaged soils, then translates the evidence into practical guidance, training and farm-level experimentation.
Testing whether farmers can cut fuel, field passes and soil disturbance without sacrificing the crop.
Measuring yield and grain-quality responses and where biological inputs add practical value.
Testing moisture retention, soil effects and crop response under Ukrainian field conditions.
Exploring practical routes to restore soil function where war has disrupted productive land.
The 2026 trials followed crop development through the season, connecting measurements with what researchers could see in the field.
Agricultural resilience is no longer only a question for farmers and researchers. Climate pressure, food security and the resilience of agricultural systems are increasingly matters of national and international policy. The challenge is turning that political imperative into changes that work in the field.
A selection of the most striking measurements from the 2026 scientific work. These are field-trial results, not blanket prescriptions. The point is to give farmers better evidence for their own decisions.
Traditional tillage used 89.0 L/ha compared with 41.2 L/ha under the domestic Mini-till system, while wheat yields remained broadly comparable.
In the 0–40 cm root zone, productive moisture rose from 20.9 mm to 26.4 mm. That is 5.5 mm more water held in the soil during a very dry season.
Biochar alone increased bunker yield from 4.83 to 5.21 t/ha in the observed treatment.
The combination of biochar + biologicals produced the highest observed bunker yield and raised protein from 11.2% in the control to 14.0%. These yield and protein observations were not replicated, so they should be read as experimental signals rather than statistically proven effects.
At the Mykolaiv trial in August, soil moisture was 11.4% in the untreated control and 15.8% under combined biochar + biological treatment. Soil density fell from 1.36 to 1.23 g/cm³.
The scientific report estimates direct costs for the tested combined reclamation pathway at UAH 104,161 per hectare. Biochar is the dominant cost at UAH 100,000/ha. The estimate excludes mandatory laboratory testing, cover-crop sowing and humanitarian demining.
The strongest economic result from the 2026 trials was not a dramatic yield jump. It was a lower cost of producing each hectare. Reduced tillage cut fuel, machinery and labour costs enough to improve margins even where yields were slightly lower.
UAH/ha. Conventional ploughing is the baseline. All three reduced-tillage systems lowered total production costs in the trial.
Largest observed saving: UAH 3,824/ha under domestic Mini-till, or about 12.9% of the conventional production cost.
Spring wheat, domestic Mini-till versus conventional ploughing.
Fuel alone accounted for roughly 79% of the total cost reduction. The farm used 47.8 fewer litres of diesel per hectare.
Additional profit versus conventional ploughing, after accounting for the observed yield differences. This is the part that matters commercially: lower costs translated into a stronger per-hectare margin.
A useful risk lens: for spring wheat, the UAH 3,824/ha cost saving gave domestic Mini-till a break-even cushion of about 0.55 t/ha at the trial's assumed grain price. In other words, conventional ploughing would need to produce roughly 550 kg/ha more wheat just to offset its higher cost.
The economics only matter if they survive the full growing season. Harvest footage provides the visual endpoint to the measurements on fuel, machinery, labour, yield and margin.
The programme turns the 2026 trials and Farmer Guide into practical conversations with farmers. UkrNDIPVT and Mykolaiv National Agrarian University will each deliver ten sessions, combining national online reach with in-person work in the regions where the evidence matters most.
Biological products, biochar, minimum tillage and remediation of agricultural soils damaged by war, grounded in the institute's machinery and field-testing evidence.
Biological products, biochar and restoration of war-damaged agricultural soils, with particular relevance to southern farming conditions.
Working delivery schedule from the 23 October 2026 Training and Dissemination Delivery Plan. Dates and formats reflect the current plan and may be adjusted with delivery partners.
The Resilient Farming Adoption Challenge is designed to move beyond dissemination. Farmers with credible, costed plans would test resilient and regenerative practices on commercial land during the 2027 growing season, with implementation funding and technical support.
Evidence moves from institutional trial plots into real commercial farm decisions.
We learn what adoption actually looks like, including cost, implementation problems and what farmers would change next time.
The Challenge is designed to test a mechanism that Government or donors could later consider replicating.
The proposed 2027 Challenge is the bridge from controlled field evidence to commercial-farm decisions. The next question is not simply whether a practice worked here, but whether farmers can make it work on their own land, under their own constraints.
The eligible geography spans markedly different farming conditions, from the more temperate north and centre to the increasingly water-stressed south. That range allows the Challenge to test where different practices are most relevant, including in areas facing acute war-related pressure.
The Challenge can test whether practices already examined around the AIC can survive the jump into farmers' own operating systems, machinery choices and cost structures.
Challenge design, dates and funding are proposed and remain subject to Minderoo approval, relevant TBI approvals and final legal/compliance arrangements. The interactive map's frontline layer is indicative and may change.