UK Slug Prediction Maps Halve Farmers' Pesticide Use
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- Slimers project, a three-year, £2.6m scheme funded by Defra and led by the British On-Farm Innovation Network, runs from 2023 to late August and recruited 28 "slug sleuth" farmers to set plastic-saucer traps on their land and feed data into a prediction algorithm.
- Prof Keith Walters and a team at Harper Adams University confirmed that slugs form distinct patches tied to soil type and climatic conditions, and that waterlogged soils destabilise those patches before they re-form temporarily in unexpected areas.
- Charles Paynter, a Bedfordshire farmer involved from the start, said the maps raised his threshold for spraying because he can now evaluate slug-risk with greater accuracy.
- The prediction model was tested by 16 farmers during the most recent autumn and winter and cut their slug-pellet use by half, according to the project.
- Wheat genome researchers within Slimers identified three regions responsible for resistance to the grey field slug, which the project hopes plant breeders will use to develop slug-resistant varieties.
- Slug damage to UK wheat and oilseed rape crops is estimated at almost £44m a year, a figure cited by the project to frame the economic stakes of better prediction.
- Metaldehyde, once a common active ingredient in UK slug pellets, was banned in 2022, driving growers toward ferric phosphate pellets and alternatives the project is exploring.
Why it matters: Sixteen farmers in trials cut their slug-pellet use in half using the prediction maps — a concrete, stated result that, if scaled across the UK's arable acreage, would meaningfully reduce ferric phosphate pellet applications. The same project also pinned down three wheat-genome regions linked to grey field slug resistance, giving breeders a concrete target for slug-tolerant varieties that could eventually lower the UK's estimated £44m annual slug bill to wheat and oilseed rape.
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