A FREE webinar to help farmers protect their crops from slugs is taking place this week. 

Farmers are being encouraged to take part in the online talk, organised by Strategies Leading to Improved Management and Enhanced Resilience Against Slugs (SLIMERS), this Thursday (October 5). 

SLIMERS will run for three years and involve more han 100 UK farms and six partners. It is being delivered through Innovate UK and led by the British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN).

The webinar will explore one potential bio-control option, which could be to encourage larger populations of the slug’s natural enemies in fields – such as carabid beetles – to reduce/suppress populations. It will focus on how beetle behaviour interacts with slugs and how a better understanding of this can help control. 

To register for the event, click here. 

Dr Kelly Jowett from Rothamsted Research, Professor Keith Walters from Harper Adams University and Wiltshire farmer Becci Berry will join BOFIN founder Tom Allen-Stevens for the event, which starts at 8.30am.

Mr Allen-Stevens said that SLIMERS is looking at a 'whole range' of actions farmers can take to reduce slug damage. 

"This includes targeted treatment procedures emerging from the slug patch location forecasting work conducted at Harper Adams University, spot treatments using the outcome of previous work undertaken by CHAP and Small Robot Company’s SlugBot project, and a combination of the two," he said. 

“Very little applied research has looked at beetle behaviour and its relationship with slugs, so we’re looking forward to hearing what some of the leaders in this field already know, and which areas need further exploration.”

The consortium of UK companies, research institutes and farmer networks working on SLIMERS
includes Crop Health and Protection, Harper Adams University, John Innes Centre, Agrivation and Small Robot Company.