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High-tech project helping farmers battle slugs enters latest phase

Posted 20 June

An innovative project which uses high-tech risk-prediction maps and AI monitoring to help farmers battle slugs is set to enter its latest phase ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½Ò•îl.

SLIMERS – Strategies Leading to Improved Management and Enhanced Resilience against Slugs – is a three-year £2.6M research programme involving more than 100 farms and seven partners.

Funded by Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, which is delivered by Innovate UK, the project is led by the British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN). It combines expertise from partner organisations Harper Adams University, the UK Agri-Tech Centre, the John Innes Centre, Fotenix, Farmscan Ag and Agrivation.

Together they are developing cost-effective forecasting and precision treatment tools, including Al-based autonomous slug monitoring and biological control and exploring 'slug resistant' wheat varieties.

As the third and final year of the project approaches, researchers at Harper Adams University believe they have a reliable model to predict slug patch location. Created with data from farmers’ slug monitoring activities over the previous two years of the project, combined with extensive soil mapping and testing, the model predicts areas in their fields with a high likelihood of containing slugs.

The next step is for SLIMERS’ team of Slug Sleuth farmer trialists to put the model to the test – using it for selective applications of slug pellets rather than blanket application. The data collected will also be used to further develop the model.

Professor of Invertebrate Biology and Pest Management Keith Walters, who leads the work at Harper Adams, said: “We’ve known for some time that slugs gather in patches, but prior to SLIMERS we didn’t understand fully the specific factors that cause this and how the patches can be reliably located.

“Thanks to the data collected by the Slug Sleuths we now have that understanding and are using our predictive model to produce detailed risk maps for their fields. In 2025-6 we are asking them to treat only the predicted slug hotspots to fine-tune the models and bring the vision of precision pest management closer to reality.”

The UK Agri-Tech Centre, Fotenix and Farmscan Ag are working on AI identification of slugs, and precision biological control in the form of nematodes.

Fotenix CEO Charles Veys added: “Our role is to build AI-powered slug detection, right there in the field. But first, we’ve got to train the AI, and that means putting slugs in the crosshairs.”

UK Agri-Tech Centre research associate Dr Kerry McDonald-Howard has been training and collecting data on Fotenix’s AI-based multi-spectral imaging cameras in a lab and in the field, before taking to Slug Sleuths’ farms for testing, helping pinpoint the exact spectral signature of the unwelcome visitors. As slugs don’t tend to surface until after dark this has meant heading out in the small hours to collect the training imagery data.

Dr McDonald-Howard said: “By harnessing AI and multi-spectral imaging, we are making significant progress towards in-field detection and identification of slugs. The next phase is to integrate this technology with precision application, enabling targeted biological control with nematodes for greater accuracy and efficiency. 

“Through SLIMERS, we are translating advanced research into practical tools that have the potential to transform and future-proof slug management for UK farmers.”

The team at Farmscan Ag are working on a system with the smallest spray width possible which will be added to an existing autonomous farm vehicle.

Director Callum Chalmers said: “We are aiming for 25cm or less, which would mean four nozzles per metre.

“We are running the first trials at the end of 2025, then field trials will be in full swing in early 2026.”

The data on slug activity collected by the 20 Slug Sleuth farmers has proven valuable not just for the project researchers – the farmers have gained from the increased insight too.

Adam Hayward farms at Bishop Burton in East Yorkshire. He said: “I soon learned which traps would have the most slugs. I didn’t know where they were before and found there was huge variation within just a few metres and between different days. It’s illustrated to me how spreading pellets across the whole field really isn’t the way to go.”

Tom Allen-Stevens, managing director of the British On-Farm Innovation Network which leads the project, added: “What’s remarkable is that we will soon have a service that we can roll out as a tool that all UK farmers will come to rely on to reduce their reliance and expenditure on pellets to control arable farming’s biggest pest. With increasing pressure on chemical control, finding sustainable and environmental solutions has never been more important.”