‘Slug sleuth’ farmers in England help develop prediction tool to cut back on pesticide use | Business
Farmers believe they have a new weapon in their age-old fight against crop-destroying slugs: modern technology.
Slug prediction maps created by computer models as part of a research project are now helping growers better target pesticide use, save money and reduce environmental damage.
The damage caused by slugs is not only annoying – as many gardeners would argue – but also expensive for arable farmers; Damage to wheat and oilseed rape crops is estimated at around 1,000. It cost almost £44 million a year in England.
The gastropod mollusk is known to graze on the young leaves of emerging grain crops and also eats the seeds of barley, oats and wheat. Slugs also damage potatoes and can have a major impact on vegetable crops; Because sometimes entire fields may need to be abandoned if there are signs of infestation.
The monitoring study is being conducted as part of the amusingly named Slimers project; This project represents strategies that lead to better management and greater resilience to slugs.
The three-year, £2.6 million programme, which starts in 2023 and ends in late August, is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and led by the British On-Farm Innovation Network.
A team of 28 “slug sleuth” farmers were recruited to work with scientists to increase understanding of the invertebrates’ behavior by setting traps (large plastic dishes) on their land. This information was fed into a computer model and an algorithm was used to predict where slugs would be found in arable fields, and soil samples were also taken.
The resulting slug prediction maps were tested by 16 farmers last fall and winter and helped them halve the amount of slug pellets they needed to use to control pests.
Charles Paynter, a farmer in Bedfordshire who has been involved with the Slimers from the beginning, has already reduced his use of pesticides.
“My threshold for taking control measures is now higher because I have been able to prove to myself that I can more accurately assess the risks from slug activity,” he said.
The chemical metaldehyde, commonly used in slug control products in the UK, Banned in 2022and this has led to increased use of ferric phosphate pellets. But there is an appetite for alternatives to pesticides.
Prof Keith Walters and a team from Harper Adams University created the slug prediction model. He said they are now sure it works.
“We already knew that slugs do not occur randomly across fields, but that they form different patches depending on soil type and climate conditions,” Walters said.
“Slug detectives’ data on slug populations in their fields helped us further develop this understanding and allowed us to confirm our hypothesis about how slug patches regenerate after waterlogging.
“In waterlogged lands, [slug] “The patches become unstable and disintegrate, but we have now confirmed that patches temporarily re-form in places we would not normally expect, and then quickly return to predicted areas when typical soil conditions return again.”
Another part of the Slimers project is working on the development of slug-resistant wheat varieties. Scientists have identified three regions in the wheat genome responsible for resistance to gray area slugs, and it is hoped that the finding will pave the way for plant breeders to develop new varieties that will not suffer from what farmers call one of the most persistent pests.
