The deal is largely funded by the £45 million in Series A funding Wild Bio raised from Larry Ellison’s Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) last year; and will see Wild Bio become a fully integrated, end-to-end seed company.
Why is this merger important?
The acquisition comes at a crucial moment, with the UK agricultural sector facing an escalating crisis.
Wheat is the country’s largest arable crop, generating roughly three billion pounds in a typical year.
Over the last 30 years, the nation’s wheat yields have remained flat, while input costs have soared. At the same time, climate change has introduced unprecedented volatility, with 2025 and 2026 seeing exceptionally dry, hot springs in England. Last year’s spring was the driest in over 100 years, contributing to a 13% drop in yield compared to the ten-year average.
But volatile weather patterns and suffering yields are predicted to become the norm, with England’s wheat farming areas potentially set to lose 10-15% of their productive potential in the next two decades.
The financial toll is devastating. Most farms already operate on very thin margins, while around a third of UK farms are currently loss-making and considering exiting the industry.
The genetics underpinning Britain’s wheat have been dominated by the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals. Over decades, the UK’s wheat pool has narrowed, leaving more than 50% of domestic wheat varieties vulnerable to a damaging fungal disease known as yellow rust.
F1 Seed, which was created by respected wheat expert Bill Angus, was specifically built to broaden genetic diversity and protect farmers from this kind of widespread crop failure. Meanwhile, Wild Bio is designing its traits and breeding new varieties in the UK for local growers.
The merger will see the company able to design, breed, and deliver new wheat varieties that address the needs of local growers.
“Wheat is Britain’s biggest crop and feeds a fifth of humanity. But on a changing planet, growing it is only getting harder,” commented Dr Ross Hendron, co-founder and CEO of Wild Bio.
“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.”
“This is the most exciting news for wheat growers since Cambridge University established the Plant Breeding Institute in 1912,” added Angus.
“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.”
