Seeds from the USDA and a glasshouse start<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The seeds were supplied by the USDA Agricultural Research Service and grown into seedlings in UKCEH’s glasshouse in Oxfordshire, according to the institute. The young plants were moved into four specially built mini paddy fields on the rewetted peat in early summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UKCEH describes the nine as cold-hardy varieties from Brazil, Colombia, Italy, Japan, North Macedonia, the Philippines and the United States, picked to suit the climate of the Fens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trial is led by Professor Richard Pywell, the lead UKCEH scientist on the project. “By its very nature, this is an experiment and so it will be interesting to see how the traditional produce and novel crops like rice perform on the rewetted peat soils alongside other land use options such as biomass production and habitat for nature,” he said in the institute’s announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fens are some of the most productive farmland in Britain. According to UKCEH, they grow crops worth around \u00a31.2 billion a year and a third of the country’s fresh vegetables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeping that land dry enough to farm strips away as much as 12 millimeters (about half an inch) of peat every year, releasing carbon that built up in the soil over thousands of years, the institute says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peat is partly decayed plant matter that piles up in waterlogged ground, where the lack of oxygen keeps it from rotting. Once air reaches it, that ancient carbon escapes<\/a> into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fens once held around 150,000 hectares (about 370,000 acres) of peatland, and roughly 24,000 hectares (about 59,000 acres) are thought to remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Craig and Sarah-Jane Taylor farm the land near Ely where the trials are taking place. “Our Fenland soils are some of the most productive in the country but are very susceptible to the changing climate and we need to adapt the crops we grow and how we grow them,” Sarah said in the UKCEH announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The trials are critical to understanding the practicalities of how we might go about large-scale rewetting of peat, including its impact on yields and farm income, as well as the potential wider benefits for wildlife and flood prevention,” she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/en-19-medio1-transplanting-rice-seedling.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
The Fens are losing their peat<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Farmers who want to try something new<\/h2>\n\n\n\n