FARINGDON, UNITED KINGDOM — Three precision-bred cereal varieties are closer to being tested on commercial farms in Europe following the harvest of trial plots.

PROBITY – A Platform to Rate Organisms Bred for Improved Traits and Yield – brings farmers, scientists and food manufacturers together to trial the production and processing of precision-bred crops to accelerate understanding of their value to sustainable food and farming. Led by the British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN), it is a three-year £2.2 million ($2.8 million) multi-partner project, funded by Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, which is delivered by Innovate UK.

Precision-bred crops can be created through gene editing, in which scientists make changes to plant DNA in a precise, targeted manner.

Seed harvested from plots at the John Innes Center near Norwich will be multiplied during 2025 so farmers in England can grow trials of the crop the following year.

Two additional varieties are being grown in glasshouses at Rothamsted Research, and once harvested this fall, will also be multiplied for trial on farms.

The three varieties will be grown on commercial farms and subjected to testing and scrutiny by farmers, scientists and food manufacturers to establish their potential.

The varieties in the project include:

• A wheat with superior baking, toasting and processing properties.
• A barley making high-lipid, high-energy forage aimed at lowering livestock methane emissions.
• A wheat with a bigger, bolder grain size promising a step change in productivity.

“This is an incredibly important project for farming and food production in this country,” said Tom Allen-Stevens, Oxfordshire farmer and founder of BOFIN. “We need to produce more nutritious food with fewer resources and with less impact on the environment. Scientists have been developing new crop varieties that could help us rise to that challenge. This project will bring those varieties from the laboratory to farmers’ fields where we can fully assess their potential, explore barriers to their adoption and pave the way for future innovation.”

Professor Nigel Halford, technical lead of PROBITY and scientist at Rothamsted Research who developed the healthier wheat line, said it’s important to grow the varieties on farms so farmers and food manufacturers can see the benefits and want to use them.

The high lipid barley variety was developed by Professor Peter Eastmond at Rothamsted Research.

“This project is hugely significant as it’s the first time in my career that it’s been possible to grow these varieties on real farms,” he said. “The work leading to this point has all been funded by the taxpayer so it is extremely important to take it to the next stage and see if this trait could stand up from a commercial point of view.”

BOFIN was founded in September 2020 and has more than 700 members, 60% of whom are farmers. BOFIN seeks to promote the work of farmers who carry out their own on-farm trials and provides a voice and a platform for the views and the discoveries of those farmers.