United Kingdom
May 6, 2026
A crop biotechnology venture originating from Rothamsted Research and University of Oxford has secured £2.5 million in strategic investment from The Mosaic Company to accelerate development of a new class of precision crop biostimulants.
The investment forms part of SugaROx’s ongoing Series A fundraising round and will support expanded international field trials, regulatory activities and commercial scale-up of the company’s product platform, and flagship biostimulant based on trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P).
T6P is a naturally occurring signalling molecule that regulates carbon allocation and utilisation within plants. SugaROx has developed proprietary delivery technologies that enable these highly polar biomolecules to be applied exogenously through conventional agricultural spray systems.
The platform technology emerged from collaborative research spanning plant metabolism, signalling biology and synthetic chemistry at Rothamsted Research and Oxford University. The company’s lead products are designed to improve crop yield, resilience and nutrient use efficiency by modulating key intracellular metabolic pathways.
Dr Cara Griffiths, Senior Research Scientist at Rothamsted Research, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of SugaROx, has played a leading role in translating the underlying biology into scalable agricultural technologies. Dr Griffiths said:
“One of the major challenges in this field has been translating highly complex plant signalling biology into technologies that can function consistently under real agricultural conditions. Our work has focused on bridging fundamental discovery science with practical delivery systems that can ultimately support more productive and resilient cropping systems.”
The investment from Mosaic follows an earlier seed-stage investment supporting scale-up of T6P production and initial international field validation activities.
SugaROx will now expand field evaluation programmes across multiple crops and environments in preparation for planned commercial launches in the UK, Europe and North America between 2027 and 2030.
The work reflects Rothamsted Research’s continued focus on translational science and the development of innovative technologies to address long-term challenges in agricultural productivity and sustainability.
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