This AgTech Startup Just Bought Its Way to Independence in UK Wheat Breeding

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-29

A quiet but significant shake-up just hit the UK wheat industry. Wild Bioscience, better known as Wild Bio, an Oxford University spinout, has acquired F1 Seed, an independent wheat breeding business based in Suffolk. The move creates Britain's first fully independent precision-breeding wheat company from end to end. While the financial details of the deal weren't disclosed, this acquisition builds on Wild Bio's momentum. The company had already raised roughly $58 million (converted from EUR 51 million) in a Series A round to expand its R&D and commercial operations. To date, Wild Bio has pulled in about $75 million (converted from EUR 65.8 million) from backers like The Ellison Institute of Technology, Oxford Science Enterprises, Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford. ### Why This Matters for Wheat Farmers Wheat is the UK's biggest crop. It feeds about a fifth of the global population. But here's the thing: growing it is getting harder. Climate change, diseases, and narrowing genetics are all piling on pressure. Dr. Ross Hendron, co-founder and CEO of Wild Bio, put it bluntly: "Wheat is Britain's biggest crop and feeds a fifth of humanity. But on a changing planet, growing it is only getting harder." That's the challenge Wild Bio exists to tackle. By combining traditional breeding with gene editing, they're focusing on traits growers actually need. And they're doing it as an independent company, not a subsidiary of a foreign multinational. ### The Tech Behind the Seeds Founded in 2021 by Dr. Hendron and Steve Kelly, Wild Bio uses a mix of evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, and gene editing to design better crops. Their platform sifts through hundreds of millions of years of plant evolution to find genetic improvements hidden in wild species. Then, they use those insights to guide precision breeding for modern elite crop varieties. Think of it like this: instead of waiting decades for nature to stumble on a useful mutation, Wild Bio uses machine learning to spot the genetic signatures that helped plants survive drought, heat, or flooding in the past. Then they activate those same traits in key crops like wheat. It's precision breeding that could, in theory, happen through conventional methods. But conventional breeding would take prohibitively long. Wild Bio speeds up the process dramatically. ### The Problem with UK Wheat Genetics Here's a scary stat: more than 50% of domestic wheat varieties in the UK are vulnerable to yellow rust, a devastating fungal disease. Why? Because the genetics behind Britain's wheat have been dominated by subsidiaries of foreign multinationals for decades. That's led to a narrowing of the wheat gene pool. F1 Seed, founded by veteran wheat breeder Bill Angus in 2014, was built specifically to broaden genetic diversity and protect farmers from widespread crop failure. Now, paired with Wild Bio's platform, the combined company aims to reverse that trend. ### What's Next F1 Seed already has six wheat varieties on the UK market, mainly for animal feed and distilling. Three more are set to launch. Bill Angus, now part of the Wild Bio team, says this is the most exciting news for wheat growers since Cambridge University established the Plant Breeding Institute back in 1912. "Deploying traits has been the lifeblood of wheat breeding," Angus said. "Now we have the opportunity to accelerate this in UK germplasm." For US readers watching the agtech space, this deal is a reminder that innovation in seed breeding isn't just about big biotech. Sometimes, it's about small teams with big ideas, backed by smart money, quietly reshaping an entire industry.