YieldMax Duo™
Agility for Changing Markets and Rotations
Empowering UK growers with flexible, dual harvests for a resilient farming future.
The future of UK agriculture demands flexibility. Today’s growers aren’t just planting for a single market—they’re juggling price fluctuations, unpredictable weather, and changing environmental incentives. Sticking to rigid, single-purpose crops is increasingly risky, limiting the ability to adapt and thrive.
The YieldMax Duo™ project is our breakthrough solution: a project to develop the UK’s first dual-purpose, precision-bred hemp, delivering both strong grain and valuable fibre yields from the same field. It’s flexibility, built into every seed.
The Challenge: Farming at the Crossroads
British arable producers are under pressure like never before:
- Volatile Markets: Prices for food, feed, and fibre swing year to year, often for reasons beyond the farm gate.
- Climate Uncertainty: Unpredictable weather can sink one market’s prospects while leaving another intact.
- One-Track Crops: Most available hemp is bred for either grain or fibre. Switching focus mid-season is virtually impossible, restricting a farmer’s options.
Our Vision: A New Kind of Crop for a New Kind of Farm
Imagine a crop that lets you pivot based on contracts and prices, ensuring no part of the harvest goes to waste. A crop that makes the transition into hemp as low-risk as possible, even for new adopters.
YieldMax Duo™ is being designed to do all this, and more.
Our Approach: Precision Breeding for Maximum Versatility
We are developing YieldMax Duo™ using the latest multiplex gene-editing techniques to deliver maximum versatility. Our key development targets include:
- Balanced Grain and Fibre Yields: Engineering the plant's genetics to deliver significant harvests of both nutritious grain and strong bast fibre.
- Uniform Height and Stable Morphology: Creating a synchronised, machine-friendly structure, with grain heads and stems maturing together for reliable mechanical harvest.
- Non-shattering Seed Heads: Minimising grain losses at harvest to simplify adoption and boost your effective returns per hectare.
- Ultra-Low THC: Ensuring continuous compliance for Home Office regulation, food safety, and supply chain assurance.
- Mechanical Harvest Compatibility: Fine-tuning the plant for single-pass harvesting to make it faster, easier, and more cost-effective.
The Journey: From Discovery to Field Adoption
Our commitment is to transparency and a data-driven development process. This is where the YieldMax Duo™ project stands today:
- Lab Validation Achieved: We have already successfully demonstrated in the University of Hertfordshire lab that our precision-breeding technology works, proving we can make the precise genetic edits needed to create advanced, multi-trait crops.
- Baseline Trials Underway: Our inaugural field season at Rothamsted Research is in progress. Using conventional hemp as a benchmark, we are gathering vital data and setting the performance benchmarks for both grain and fibre yield under real-world UK conditions. This is a critical step to ensure our future innovations deliver measurable improvements.
- Multiplex Editing for Dual-Use Next: The next, exciting phase will leverage our validated technology to perform the complex, multiplex edits required for YieldMax Duo™. Our focus will be on simultaneously engineering the key pathways for balanced grain and fibre yield, non-shattering seed heads, and a uniform plant structure ready for mechanical harvesting. These advanced lines will then move into rigorous field trials.
Key Benefits: Why We're Developing YieldMax Duo™
- Market Agility: Flexibly target grain, fibre, or both. If prices drop in one sector, profits can still be realised elsewhere.
- Built-In Risk Management: If weather jeopardises fibre quality but the grain is still sound (or vice versa), you don’t lose the entire season’s income.
- Environmental Gains: A perfect fit for ELMS, delivering soil regeneration, biodiversity benefits, and carbon sequestration with traceable stewardship records.
- Labour and Cost Savings: The uniform crop architecture will enable one-pass harvesting, using standard UK combines and balers.
Join the Collaboration
YieldMax Duo™ thrives on partnership. Our teams at the University of Hertfordshire and Rothamsted Research work side-by-side with growers, machinery specialists, and processors to ensure our innovations deliver value from seed to final product.
Are you a forward-thinking grower who wants to reduce market risk? A processor seeking a reliable stream of sustainable UK-grown grain and fibre?
YieldMax Duo™ is for you. Join our pilot trials, knowledge-sharing sessions, or co-design workshops. Together, we’ll set a new standard for crop flexibility, resilience, and profitability in British agriculture.