Pushing wheat yields to a new frontier

SugaROx is a spin-out from Oxford University and Rothamsted Research launched in Feb 2021 to develop biostimulants to improve the productivity, resilience, and sustainability of crop production. The venture develops single-molecule formulations based on Active Ingredients (AI) inspired by natural plant molecules. The AI in its first product, a biostimulant to boost wheat yields, is inspired by trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P). T6P is critical for sugar use and allocation in plants.

Through a FIP Feasibility Study, SugaROx successfully designed and tested prototype formulations for its wheat biostimulant and validated important assumptions in its R&D, registration and commercialisation strategies. Yield boosts of up to 22% were registered for spring and winter wheat. As a next step, SugaROx needs to test to what extent that astonishing result can be replicated across a range of end-user environments and commercial wheat varieties.

This Small R&D Partnership enables SugaROx to access the knowledge, skills, facilities, and equipment required to accelerate product development. Amongst other objectives, SugaROx and partners will evaluate and optimise a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the wheat biostimulant through extensive field trials and then validate the MVP performance across a range of end-user scenarios. To find out more about our project, contact our Business Development Director Bianca Forte at [bianca.forte@sugarox.co.uk][0].

[0]: mailto:bianca.forte@sugarox.co.uk