Gene-edited cereal varieties are set to be harvested on commercial English farms for the first time in 2026. Speaking at Cereals 2025, the managing director of the British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN), Tom Allen-Stevens, explained that new legislation will come into effect from November 2025 to allow gene-edited crops to be grown on commercial English farms.

“We’re bringing the first of these precision-bred cereals forward, and in fact, we are going to be growing precision-bred cereals on English farms for the first time for harvest 2026,” said Allen-Stevens.

As part of the platform to rate organisms bred for improved traits and yield (PROBITY) project, gene-edited varieties will be trialled on up to 25 farms across England.

“We do have one particular spring barley that we are planning to put into trial next year,” he said. Allen-Stevens added that this legislation is specific to England, so farms in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland will not be allowed to grow these gene-edited crops.

The project is also trialling varieties bred through an older technique called TILLING, which targets induced local lesions in genomes. Although this technique is considered conventional breeding, it is less precise, takes longer, and is more laborious.

“There are two interesting traits that we’ve got, the first one is a deep rooting ability that puts the roots down vertically. The advantage is that they should root more deeply but it has never yet been proven in the field. We’ve also got a low acrylamide trait in the Claire variety [of wheat].”

Allen-Stevens explained that a naturally-occurring amino acid, asparagine, can become carcinogenic as acrylamide when cooked at a high temperature, such as when baking or toasting bread.

“We do know that there is a yield hit with the Claire variety, but the exciting thing is that the following year, we are bringing forward Cadenza, which is a precision-bred variety and has none of the yield hit. It has all of the advantages of Claire but none of the disadvantages.”