Wild Bioscience (Wild Bio), a University of Oxford spinout that designs improved crops for resilient agriculture, has acquired independent wheat breeding business, F1 Seed.
Wild Bio is a plant science startup that develops next-generation resilient crops for a food-secure future.
By teaming up with F1 Seed, Wild Bio becomes a fully integrated, end-to-end UK seed company, positioning it to challenge agrochemical multinationals and address the escalating crisis in British agriculture.
UK wheat yields have remained flat for 30 years, while input costs have soared and climate change has introduced unprecedented volatility. Both last year and 2026 brought consecutive exceptionally dry, hot springs to England, with 2025 being the driest in over 100 years and 2026 the warmest spring on record.
In 2025, this contributed to a 13% drop in wheat yield compared to the ten-year average.
By pairing scientific advancements in gene editing with a deep breeding pipeline, Wild Bio says the integrated businesses can pursue traits more efficiently than either could on its own across yield, stability and disease resistance, and translate them into varieties to address the needs of local growers.
With this acquisition, Wild Bio will be able to offer UK farmers a solution, providing seeds developed with technology and designed specifically for UK conditions.
“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 we exist to meet,” says Dr Ross Hendron, co-founder and CEO of Wild Bio.
“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.”
