Research Associate

Wild Bioscience, an Oxford University AgTech spinout, has acquired F1 Seed, a Suffolk-based wheat breeding business, for an undisclosed sum. The deal creates Britain's first independent precision-breeding wheat company combining gene editing with traditional breeding expertise. The acquisition follows Wild Bio's €51 million Series A round and brings its total funding to €65.8 million from investors including The Ellison Institute of Technology and Oxford Science Enterprises. Wild Bio uses evolutionary biology, AI, and gene editing to develop climate-resilient crops. F1 Seed, founded in 2014 by Bill Angus, already has six wheat varieties on the UK market with three more launching this year. The merger addresses concerns that foreign multinationals dominate UK wheat genetics, leaving over 50% of domestic varieties vulnerable to yellow rust disease.

Wild Bioscience ramps up efforts to futureproof food supply. 25th April A biotechnology company is ramping up its work to future-proof global food supplies. Wild Bioscience has expanded its operations on Milton Park, Oxfordshire, after securing £45 million in funding. The University of Oxford spinout focuses on developing climate-resilient crops and will use the funding to scale up its laboratory facilities and advance its commercial plans. Ross Hendron, CEO and co-founder of Wild Bioscience, said: "Since founding Wild Bio, we've been building a powerful design engine to create resilient crops. "AI is now dramatically accelerating that capability, but to realise its full potential we need to scale pipelines that turn predictions into validated crop products and feed real-world results back to continuously improve our models. "This expansion in infrastructure, team, and technology is a key step in developing the engineering loop that bridges computational design and plant biology. "We're starting with the world's most widely grown crop: wheat. "We're excited to welcome Lisa and Stuart to the team as we deploy our Series A to fundamentally change how crops are designed, enabling agriculture to keep up with our rapidly changing planet." The latest funding round was led by the Ellison Institute of Technology, with continued backing from investors including Oxford Science Enterprises, Braavos, and the University of Oxford. Wild Bioscience has signed a new lease to expand its laboratory and office space by 4,560 sq ft at Milton Park, bringing its total footprint to 16,000 sq ft. The expansion includes new facilities at 115 Olympic Avenue and a recently equipped gene-editing laboratory at 127 Olympic Avenue. This additional space has enabled the company to triple its plant output within a matter of months. The company employs 40 staff and has been growing organically at Milton Park since 2021. It uses AI-driven modelling and molecular biology to identify and harness traits from wild plant species, with the goal of boosting crop resilience, increasing yields, and reducing carbon intensity. Recent partnerships include collaborations with The Traits Company, KWS, Dyson Farming, and Pairwise Plants to support the international development and deployment of improved crop varieties. The company has also strengthened its leadership team. Lisa Flashner, chief operating officer at the Ellison Institute of Technology, has joined the board as a non-executive director. Dr Stuart Harrison has been appointed chief business officer. Tom Booker, asset manager at Milton Park for Federated Hermes Real Estate, said: "Wild Bioscience's continued growth is a strong example of how companies can start, scale and specialise at Milton Park. "Their expansion reflects both the strength of their science and the momentum behind the business, supported by significant recent investment, the addition of senior leadership and a clear pathway to commercialisation. "It's exactly the kind of journey the park is designed to support."

Pairwise partners with ball horticultural company for ornamental crop gene editing. - April 22, 2026 Why it matters. By merging Pairwise's precision-editing technology with Wild Bio's AI-based trait discovery, the deal could dramatically shorten breeding cycles and unlock new revenue streams in climate-smart agriculture, a rapidly expanding market segment. Key takeaways. * - Pairwise licenses Fulcrum tools to Wild Bioscience for crop editing * - Wild Bio integrates CRISPR with AI to accelerate trait discovery * - Collaboration targets climate-resilient row crops and carbon-sequestering varieties * - Fulcrum platform includes proprietary enzymes and trait libraries for commercial use Pulse analysis. The agricultural biotech sector is witnessing a surge in strategic licensing deals as companies seek to combine cutting-edge genome-editing with data-driven breeding. Pairwise's Fulcrum(R) platform, built on proprietary CRISPR enzymes and curated trait libraries, represents a next-generation toolkit that can be deployed across multiple commodity crops. By granting Wild Bioscience access, Pairwise not only monetizes its R&D assets but also positions itself as a critical enabler for firms aiming to accelerate trait validation without building in-house editing capabilities. Wild Bioscience's core advantage lies in its AI-powered pipeline that mines genomic and phenotypic data to predict high-impact traits. Integrating Fulcrum's precise editing suite allows the company to move from computational insight to field-ready varieties in a fraction of the traditional timeline. This synergy reduces the breeding cycle from years to months, enabling rapid response to emerging climate threats and consumer demand for sustainable produce. The partnership exemplifies how biotech firms are leveraging artificial intelligence to make gene editing more predictive and cost-effective. From a market perspective, the collaboration targets the growing demand for climate-adapted crops that can sustain yields under drought, heat and salinity stress while also contributing to carbon sequestration goals. Analysts project that climate-smart agriculture could command a multi-billion-dollar market by the early 2030s, and early movers like Pairwise and Wild Bio stand to capture significant share. Their joint effort may also spur further consolidation, as larger agribusinesses look to acquire or partner with firms that combine robust editing platforms with sophisticated AI analytics, reshaping the competitive landscape of modern plant breeding. Madison Hong * Pairwise signed a licensing agreement granting Wild Bioscience access to its Fulcrum(R) genome editing tools. * Wild Bio will integrate CRISPR-based tools into its AI-driven crop trait development pipeline. * The collaboration targets resilient crops designed for climate adaptation, yield improvement, and carbon removal. * The license applies to a range of row crops across Wild Bio's development programs. * Fulcrum(R) includes proprietary gene-editing tools, enzymes, and trait libraries for research and commercial use. Pairwise grants Wild Bioscience access to Fulcrum(R) platform. Pairwise, an agricultural biotechnology company focused on precision breeding, has announced a licensing agreement with Wild Bioscience Ltd. (Wild Bio). The agreement provides Wild Bio with access to Pairwise's Fulcrum(R) genome editing tools for use in crop-trait research and commercial development. Under the terms of the agreement, Wild Bio will incorporate Fulcrum(R) tools into its research and development pipeline to support the design and development of more resilient crop varieties. The license covers both research and commercial applications across a range of row crops. Integrating ai-driven discovery with crispr-based editing. Wild Bio applies artificial intelligence and evolutionary biology to identify beneficial plant traits. By combining computational discovery with commercial genetics, the company aims to accelerate crop improvement programs. Want to join the conversation?