Wild Bio, founded in 2021 by Dr Ross Hendron and Irish man Prof Steve Kelly, specialises in crop genetics by researching genetic solutions that developed through evolution.

University of Oxford spin-out Wild Bioscience, which develops improved crop varieties using AI and precision breeding, has acquired wheat breeding business F1 Seed for an undisclosed amount.

By acquiring F1 Seed, Wild Bio will become a “fully integrated, end-to-end UK seed company”, forming a single business able to design, breed and deliver new wheat varieties to growers.

Wild Bio, founded in 2021 by Dr Ross Hendron and Irish man Prof Steve Kelly, specialises in crop genetics by researching genetic solutions that developed through evolution to improve crops in the past, and then using these discoveries to design simple fixes for modern crops.

The start-up does this by building unique plant biology datasets and applying AI and machine learning tools to find “signatures” for how evolution has improved plants. The Wild Bio platform can then target specific “nature-tested” traits and activate them in crops such as wheat.

With this acquisition, Wild Bio will be able to utilise F1 Seed’s wheat breeding capabilities and access its diverse germplasm – genetic resources such as seeds, tissues, and DNA sequences – pipeline, which has been developed for more than a decade.

Wild Bio’s goal is to deliver conventionally bred, optimised wheat varieties directly to UK farmers by 2027, followed by the first precision-bred lines in field trials by 2028.

F1 Seed already has six wheat varieties on the UK market, primarily focused on animal feed and distilling, and plans to launch three more later this year. Of the 82 new wheat varieties entering official UK national trials this year, 12pc – 10 entries – come directly from F1 Seed’s pipeline, according to the press release.

“This is the most exciting news for wheat growers since Cambridge University established the Plant Breeding Institute in 1912,” said Bill Angus, founder and director of F1 Seed. “That organisation established the blueprint for integrating new traits into cereals.

“Now over a century later, armed with an array of novel traits, we are well placed to move wheat breeding into a new and exciting era. Deploying traits has been the lifeblood of wheat breeding – now we have the opportunity to accelerate this in UK germplasm.”

Wild Bio said the acquisition comes as the UK’s farming industry hits a tipping point, as wheat yields have remained flat for three decades while input costs have risen and the climate crisis has introduced “unprecedented volatility”.

In fact, a report from last November found that one third of surveyed UK farmers made no profit in the previous year, with more than half considering leaving the industry.

With the record-breaking heatwaves and drought seen in recent years affecting wheat yields significantly, Wild Bio said it will be able to help UK farmers by providing seeds designed specifically for the country’s conditions.

“Wheat is Britain’s biggest crop and feeds a fifth of humanity. But on a changing planet, growing it is only getting harder,” said Hendron, who is also Wild Bio’s CEO. “That’s the challenge we exist to meet.

“As a new independent seed business that brings breeding and gene editing together, we can focus on the traits that growers genuinely need and design towards them with precision. Bill and his team have built something remarkable; pairing their strengths with our evolutionary platform gives us the full stack of capabilities we need to develop the varieties that will bend the yield curve upwards again.”

Last October, Wild Bio raised $60m in a Series A round led by the Ellison Institute of Technology, founded by Oracle’s Larry Ellison. The company’s acquisition of F1 Seed was largely financed by this funding, according to Wild Bio.

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