Smarter Pest Control: Inside the SLIMERS Project with Fotenix
- Fotenix Team
- Oct 25
- 1 min read
At a glance
Slugs are sneaky and increasingly difficult to control… Fotenix is partnering with UK Agri-tech and BOFIN’s Slug Sleuths to help stop them in their slimy tracks.
Slugs may be small, but their impact is significant, and with regulations limiting traditional control options, growers need better tools to address them.
Traditional slug monitoring relies on visual checks or trapping, both of which are limited and can miss early infestations. The SLIMERS project aims to identify slugs at an individual level, enabling precise, targeted intervention.
Why Fotenix?
Fotenix is about more than lights. Our AI-powered platform interprets imaging data to provide early assessments of everything from plant health to nutritional profile.
By teaming up with the UK Agri-Tech Centre and BOFIN’s Slug Sleuths, we hope to pinpoint the spectral signature of these slimy interlopers.
What we did:
In early 2025, the team at the UK Agri-Tech Centre scanned slugs across BOFIN's Slug Sleuths (project trialists) farms. Fotenix used this data to isolate the spectral signature of invasive slug species. This data was then used to train AI models that can detect invasive species in real time.
The impact
Defining and labelling data is critical for building libraries of key pests, which can be used to develop software that can spot slugs earlier and more accurately than human or drone scouts – it’s the start of an early warning system, if you will.
What’s next?
We’ll be scaling the tech from trial to commercial settings and integrating it with FarmScanAg's automated sprayer. This should take us one step closer to viable per-slug detection and treatment. Reducing chemical use, improving pest control, and strengthening crops.
