Wild Bioscience Ltd (Wild Bio) today announced the formation of a consortium of leading UK agriculture businesses to accelerate the development and commercialisation of new precision-bred wheat varieties designed to sustainably increase yield and resilience.

Wild Bio, an agricultural biotechnology spinout from the University of Oxford, is leading the collaboration. The company specialises in crop improvement by combining AI-driven discovery with evolutionary biology to generate novel, proprietary genetic traits. Wild Bio recently announced a soy product partnership targeting growers across the Americas. With this new wheat programme, Wild Bio is demonstrating the scalability and relevance of its evolutionary AI platform across crops and geographies.

To accelerate this wheat programme, Wild Bio has brought together a team that includes KWS, the largest supplier of wheat varieties in the UK, and Dyson Farming, the largest commercial farming operation in the UK, to span the full route from trait development to large-scale farming. Wild Bio will work with KWS to integrate proprietary wheat traits into leading KWS varieties, while Dyson Farming will deploy these seeds in commercial growing environments to generate real-world performance data. Industry veteran Andrew Newby of Newby Partnerships will also join the collaboration, contributing valuable insight into the commercial strategy.

By deliberately aligning trait development, elite germplasm integration, and commercial-scale cultivation within a single programme, Wild Bio is engineering a faster and more capital-efficient path to market for precision-bred wheat varieties. Insights generated from field performance will feed directly back into Wild Bio’s platform, enabling rapid iteration and de-risking of future products.

The consortium has been awarded financial backing from Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme and Innovate UK for £1.13M of project costs to accelerate these activities and support the translation of precision-bred innovation into practical, grower-ready solutions.

Sam Gattis, CTO of Wild Bio, said: “By uniting AI-enabled trait discovery, leading seed expertise, and large-scale UK farming networks, we hope to deliver the benefits of precision breeding to growers far faster than working independently.”

Richard Meredith, Head of Research at Dyson Farming, said: “Dyson Farming Research is thrilled to be part of a partnership that has the potential to reshape the future of UK wheat production. By helping to translate cutting‑edge photosynthesis research into a commercially relevant wheat variety, we’re contributing to advances that could deliver real benefits for growers, the environment, and long‑term food security.”

Andrew Newby, Managing Director of Newby Partnerships, said: “The real strength of this project is simplicity, as yield increase is a universal requirement across all the supply chain and the major link to increased sustainability.”

Jacob Lage, Head of Wheat Breeding at KWS, said: “KWS is pleased to be part of this collaboration on enhancing photosynthesis and yield using genome editing in wheat. We strongly believe that a combination of modern germplasm and new breeding technologies will help farmers achieve higher, more reliable yields.”

About Wild Bio

Wild Bioscience Ltd is an agricultural biotechnology company applying evolutionary biology and AI to develop resilient, high-performance crops for a changing planet. Founded in 2021 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, the company was established by Dr. Ross Hendron and Prof. Steve Kelly and is backed by the Ellison Institute Oxford, Oxford Science Enterprises, Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford.

About KWS

KWS is one of the world’s leading plant breeding companies. Around 5,000 employees (excluding seasonal workers) in over 70 countries generated net sales of around €1.68 billion in fiscal 2024/2025. A company with a tradition of family ownership, KWS has operated independently for almost 170 years. It focuses on plant breeding and the production and sale of seed for sugarbeet, corn, cereals, vegetables, oilseed rape and sunflowers. KWS uses leading-edge plant breeding methods to continuously improve yield for farmers and plants’ resistance to diseases, pests and abiotic stress. To that end, the company invested approximately €350 million in fiscal year 2024/2025 in research and development.

About Dyson Farming

Operating across more than 14,000 hectares, Dyson Farming is recognised as one of the UK’s most forward-thinking agricultural businesses, known for its integrated approach to food production, renewable energy, and environmental stewardship.

About Newby Partnerships

Newby Partnerships Ltd is a private company set up in July 2023 to provide consultancy services to the agricultural seeds sector with a particular focus on providing mechanisms by which the plant breeding community can link with both farmers, end user processors and the retail sector.

About Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme

The Farming Innovation Programme (FIP) is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and delivered by Innovate UK. FIP supports innovative projects that aim to improve the sustainability and productivity of the agricultural sector. By funding cutting-edge research and development, FIP helps drive the adoption of new technologies and practices that benefit farmers, the environment, and society as a whole.

About Innovate UK

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is the UK’s innovation agency. It works to create a better future by inspiring, involving and investing in businesses developing life-changing innovations. Its mission is to help companies to grow through their development and commercialisation of new products, processes and services, supported by an outstanding innovation ecosystem that is agile, inclusive and easy to navigate.