Jeff built Twyford International which grew to become the largest tissue culture company in the world, as well as breeding vegetable and flower crops. He also built Southern Glass Produce (SGP) to be one of the largest flower businesses in the UK, which also bred chrysanthemums and other ornamentals. SGP was sold to Kirin. Jeff served on the board of Kirin Agribio and thus became involved in several European breeding businesses including Germicopa, a French potato breeder.

In the mid-1980s, he helped introduce the Linseed crop to the UK via seed selection and multiplication, agronomic trials and market development. In the 1990s, Nigel re-introduced Fibre Flax in which both the seed and fibre are harvested. He helped advance an innovative short fibre processing method and set up a processing factory. He was active in trade organisations, representing and lobbying for UK interests for Oilseed and Fibre crops at the European Commission. In 2001 Nigel set up Premium Crops Ltd, which maintains a dominant position in the specialist crops market, incorporating Linseed, High Erucic Acid Rape, Lupins, Red Wheat and crops for the birdseed market.

These include Mendel Biotechnology, Norfolk Plant Sciences and its wholly owned US subsidiary, Norfolk Healthy Produce.

Jonathan’s work is recognised by election to prestigious academic societies (Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences) and by several awards. He is an advisor to the 2Blades Foundation whose mission is also to provide sustainable crop disease control through modern biology.

His team identified several detector genes that when stacked together provide strong late blight resistance and also genes for resistance to two viruses. With this approach, blight resistance genes provide a more durable resistance than when deployed alone. Since these genes are from within the potato gene pool, their introduction into potato varieties is compatible with the PBA.

He has worked for Greens Of Soham, the UK parent company to Spearhead Marketing Ltd & Greenseed International Ltd for all of this time, he is a Director of both companies. Darren has also held Non-Executive Director roles in the Agri-Tech sector and he is a Founding Partner of his consultancy firm BioMac Agri.