What do the latest updates to the Genetic Technology Act mean for the UK’s AgBio landscape?
Date Posted: Wed May 2025
With insights from Benoit Bely, Associate Director of Bioinformatics at Tropic Biosciences
Earlier this month the UK Government laid some secondary legislation under the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act of 2023, enabling the commercial use of gene-edited crops in England. The legislation’s rollout had been delayed since March 2023, perhaps in part because of the general election and subsequent change in government. This update means we can expect to see applications for product approval as soon as this autumn.
This comes after last month the government announced £25m in funding through the Farming Innovation Programme, with half of that allocated specifically to precision breeding. The aim is to drive projects focused on areas like disease resistance, climate resilience, and nutritional enhancement, and the application for the funding is open until the end of next month.
Gene editing in crops, and techniques like CRISPR/Cas9, is already well-established in other AgriTech markets. The US has seen gene-edited soybeans, canola, non-browning apples, and virus-resistant tomatoes enter commercial production over the past decade. This level of funding is a good sign of appetite from the government that they’d like to drive efforts further here, but it does leave gaps.
Depending on the specific area of agricultural genetic editing a firm is in, that level of investment might not stretch far – especially considering the level of investment we’re seeing in the States, who remain the global leader in AgTech, with more than $500m of investment in the field changing hands in this year alone.
Benoit Bely, Director of Bioinformatics in Agritech, views the funding as important but not yet transformative.
“If you're looking at molecular biology experiments, you can burn through that in a few years… you need infrastructure. You need space to grow. For rice for example, you need 20 degrees, 70% humidity. You need greenhouses, pest control. It’s a huge investment just to do the science.”
Infrastructure is a core barrier. Without it, the UK will struggle to deliver on the promise this legislation unlocks.
Startups are pushing forward but big players are missing
Companies like Tropic Biosciences, Wild Bioscience, and Resurrect Bio are driving our domestic efforts in precision crop engineering, alongside firms like Biographica, who use deep learning tech to identify and prioritise targets for crop editing. These high-potential startups, and institutions like the EIT and Rothamsted Research, form a huge part of what is the current UK precision crop engineering ecosystem.
What the UK lacks is scale; larger players building the blueprint and showing we have a real chance on the global stage. There are no equivalents to Syngenta, BASF, or Corteva operating domestically.
“The UK has startups, but we don’t have a major player to drive this. The big actors are American or German,” said Benoit. “It’s good for innovation, but we’ll need larger companies or significant investment if we want to build real global presence.”
In the US, gene-edited products have been commercially viable for nearly a decade. Our path is newer, but arguably more streamlined. Unlike the FDA's case-by-case approvals, the UK now permits commercialisation under a general regulatory framework.
“The UK is opening the door and aiming to take the lead in Europe. The question is whether it can capture value from that, or whether the US continues to dominate the space,” said Benoit.
Our agility might provide some advantage, but long-term leadership will rely on continued investment and scale.
What does this mean for talent?
As we go from R&D to product development, bioinformatics, regulatory, and translational roles are moving to the forefront. There’s growing interest in bringing in talent from other branches of life sciences, but not all skills transfer easily.
“The techniques might look simple on paper, but with plants, it’s a nightmare,” Benoit explained. “Most plant genomes aren’t well annotated. If you want to create drought-resistant crops, you need to know exactly which genes regulate water loss. That’s not trivial. You need scientists who can work with large, messy genomic datasets, people with deep experience in gene discovery and annotation. It takes about a year to build a reliable annotation for a new plant genome.”
The transition is possible, it’s one Benoit made himself, moving from precision medicine to agriculture. The need for bioinformaticians who can operate across complex, poorly mapped plant systems is there, and other areas of life sciences provide transferrable skills. Equally important are biologists who are comfortable working with big data in real-world commercial environments.
Final thoughts
This update to regulation and the proposed public funding is a clear step in the right direction. It legitimises years of pre-commercial research and could lead to more firms being established in this space, and greater demand for expertise in this area.
But this isn’t quite a turning point; when I spoke with Benoit, he agreed.
“The investment will need to follow. The UK government wants this to happen, and that helps. But scale still depends on whether the major players choose to come here.”
Over the next couple of years our space on the global AgriTech stage will need to be measured in practical terms, like infrastructure built, field trials launched, companies funded, and talent hired.
Benoit Bely is a Director of Bioinformatics with 20+ years of commercial bioinformatics experience in the health and agritech sectors.
Written By:
Joe Phillips
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