Twenty five years of private wheat breeding in the UK: Lessons for other countries Viktoriya Galushko 1, * and Richard Gray 2 1 Department of Economics, University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, S4S 0A2. 2 Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics, University of Saskatchewan, 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7N 5A8. Email: Richard.gray@usask.ca. * Corresponding author. Email: Viktoriya.galushko@uregina.ca. Crop research sectors in many countries are facing reduced public support with public breeding programs being gradually replaced by private ones. This paper explores the UK experience with the privatization of wheat breeding that began in 1987. The analysis presented in this paper is based on interviews with sixteen experts currently involved in wheat research breeding in the UK. Taking a snapshot of UK wheat research today, it would be easy to conclude that the UK sector made a smooth transition from public to private breeding. However, this is not the case. The UK faced many challenges in establishing an integrated wheat innovation system and has only recently developed policies and funding processes that have enabled upstream public scientists to work with private wheat breeding industry. As policy makers around the world contemplate the privatization of crop breeding, important lessons can be drawn from the UK crop research funding model. Keywords: crop research and breeding; privatization; wheat innovation. 1. Introduction The food crisis of 2007 and the higher grain prices that have since prevailed have renewed both private and public interest in agricultural research. Despite persistently high estimates of rates of return to agricultural R&D and the compelling evidence of the significant contribution of R&D to increases in farm productivity (Alston et al. 2000, 2011), most developed countries have reduced the intensity of crop research and breeding since 1990 (Alston et al. 2010). While some crops with strong property rights, such as maize and canola, have witnessed increased private in- vestment to replace public funds, most crops have not. Given the budgetary pressures that most countries currently face it is unlikely that government support of agricultural R&D will be as generous as it was a half a century ago. Given this prognosis, there is a need to design an innovation system with sufficient research investment to sustain a more optimal pace of innovation. The privatization of wheat breeding is increasingly viewed as a means to increase breeding activity. In the USA several land grant universities 1 have announced wheat-breeding partnerships with private multinational firms. In Canada, Bayer Crop Science has recently initiated a wheat-breeding programme in Western Canada. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which currently operates Canada’s largest wheat-breeding programme, has indicated its intention to privatize its commercial breeding activities (Jones 2012). Australia has privatized its wheat-breeding industry over the past decade and has attracted investment from many global crop research firms. While the privatization of public crop breeding is a means to increase total research investment, it can also induce significant changes in knowledge sharing, research linkages, research networks, research practices, and research outcomes. It is therefore important to fully under- stand these broader implications of the privatization of crop breeding. Some of this understanding can come from examining the experience of other countries where privatization of breeding has already taken place. Science and Public Policy (2014) pp. 1–15 doi:10.1093/scipol/scu004 ß The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Science and Public Policy Advance Access published March 11, 2014