The UK has successfully grown its first rice crop in Cambridgeshire, a groundbreaking experiment initially dismissed as a joke. This trial aims to address future food security and climate change impacts in the face of a changing global climate.

• Nine varieties of rice, including risotto, basmati, and sushi types, were cultivated in four mini paddy fields on a farm in east England.
• Nadine Mitschunas, the UK's first rice-grower, and ecologist, spearheaded the project in partnership with Craig and Sarah Taylor, on whose land the rice was planted.
• The project, an initiative of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), also critically explores using rice cultivation to re-wet peat soils in the Fens, potentially locking away greenhouse gases and mitigating 3% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions that currently originate from peat soils.