Backed by £1.2m in government funding, the collaboration aims to accelerate the development and commercialisation of new precision-bred wheat varieties designed to sustainably increase yield and resilience.
A joined‑up route from trait development to commercial fields
The project is led by Wild Bio, an Oxford University spinout combining AI‑enabled discovery with evolutionary biology to engineer novel crop traits. The company will work with KWS to integrate its proprietary traits into elite wheat germplasm, while Dyson Farming will generate real‑world performance data through large‑scale field deployment.
By designing the programme to run trait development, variety integration and commercial‑scale cultivation in parallel, Wild Bio aims to shorten the path to market and cut development costs. Field insights will feed directly back into the company’s discovery platform to accelerate iteration and reduce risk.
Three‑year development window, followed by national listing
Wild Bio CEO Dr. Ross Hendron told AgTechNavigator that the team is targeting more than 10% productivity gains, and has already seen 20%+ yield improvements in early engineered lines.
The consortium’s work will run for three years, by which time Hendron expects to have precision‑bred elite varieties ready for validation.
“At that stage we’d hope to proceed to national listing for commercial launch a couple of years after that to enable seed sales to begin for these particular varieties,” Hendron said.
That timeline places the first precision‑bred wheat varieties on the UK market in around five years.
The project is enabled by the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 and the 2025 Regulations, which came into force in November 2025 and allow the release and marketing of precision‑bred plants in England.
Partners see major productivity and sustainability upside
Dyson Farming’s head of research Richard Meredith said the collaboration could help 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.”
Wild Bio anticipates environmental gains alongside yield improvements. Hendron noted that the company’s traits aim to capture and use solar energy more efficiently: “We have seen increases in yield with no changes to inputs needed. That means you can produce more food with the same resources, or the same amount of food with fewer resources. Creating those options for growers is an important win from a sustainability perspective.”
Industry advisor Andrew Newby of Newby Partnerships also joins the collaboration. He said the project’s “simplicity” makes it compelling: yield gain is a universal requirement across the supply chain and central to improving sustainability.
Regulatory momentum beyond the UK
While the UK has already created a pathway for precision‑bred crops (in England at least), Hendron said alignment with other markets, especially Europe, remains the biggest uncertainty.
Momentum is building and the EU is expected to formally endorse its agreement on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) in spring 2026. Hendron said he is optimistic that regulatory convergence will arrive during the project’s lifetime, helping unlock international scale.
Building farmer confidence in gene‑edited crops
The consortium also aims to support grower adoption. Hendron said partnering with Dyson Farming will help demonstrate the varieties’ performance across diverse conditions: “We’re keen to engage with growers and make sure we’re developing solutions that really deliver for them. Dyson brings a great network of farming operations that will allow us to bring these technologies to many growers for the first time and show they can deliver across a breadth of conditions to build confidence in this approach.”
The UK effort differs from Wild Bio’s recently announced soybean partnership in the Americas. While both follow a trait‑plus‑elite‑variety model, the wheat programme allows Wild Bio to take a more central role in developing fully new varieties.
“We have been developing complete R&D capabilities that span trait discovery through to product development and testing at Wild Bio,” Hendron said. “We can be a real driving force in delivering novel crops for the UK.”