Wild Bio buys F1 Seed to expand UK wheat breeding

Wild Bioscience Ltd, a University of Oxford spin-out focused on resilient crop design, has acquired F1 Seed Ltd, an independent wheat breeding business led by Bill Angus. The deal turns Wild Bio into a fully integrated UK seed company, combining F1 Seed’s breeding pipeline and germ-plasm with Wild Bio’s evolutionary biology, gene editing and AI-led trait discovery.

The combined business plans to develop wheat varieties for yield, stability and disease resistance, with a focus on UK growers. Wild Bio’s platform searches for genetic improvements that have emerged through evolution, builds plant biology datasets and applies ML/AI tools to target traits that can be activated through precision breeding.

UK wheat yields have remained flat for 30 years, while input costs and climate pressures have intensified. 2025 and 2026 brought two consecutive exceptionally dry, hot springs to England, with 2025 the driest in over 100 years and 2026 the warmest spring on record. In 2025, yields fell 13% compared to the 10-year average, and much of England’s wheat-growing areas could lose 10-25% of productive potential over the coming two decades.

F1 Seed already has six wheat varieties on the UK market, with three more launching this year. Of the 82 new wheat varieties entering official UK national trials this year, 12% (10 entries) come from F1 Seed’s pipeline. The acquisition also follows England’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations, in force since November 2025.