For the last thirty years, Charlie Carr, 54, who operates from a converted barn just above the small, but relatively well known town of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, has been working towards solving a perennial problem which has plagued generations of gardeners and commercial farmers the world over. Working in partnership with scientists from the University of Leeds in a project jointly funded by a host of "Green" and organic gardening organisations, his team were preparing to announce a breakthrough which could have transformed our relationship with the common slug forever.
His vision was to provide protection for those crops, plants and flowers which are susceptible to slug attacks leading to decimation and loss. This was to be achieved without the use of chemicals or poisons and without the wholesale destruction of the gastropod molluscs. On the contrary, the slug was about to become the farmers' friend and his work would have led to slugs becoming welcome in every garden in the land.
His vision was to provide protection for those crops, plants and flowers which are susceptible to slug attacks leading to decimation and loss. This was to be achieved without the use of chemicals or poisons and without the wholesale destruction of the gastropod molluscs. On the contrary, the slug was about to become the farmers' friend and his work would have led to slugs becoming welcome in every garden in the land.
Through years and years of selective breeding, with many false dawns and setbacks, Dr. Carr and his team had finally produced a breed of super slugs which were genetically programmed to be attracted only to common weeds such as the Dandelion (Taraxacum) and Buttercup (Ranunculus acris) as a food source and to find selected cultivated plants and crops unappealing. In August 2009, a batch of 88 individual slugs, with the batch number R84-27, finally all demonstrated the characteristics for which they had been bred. Extensive trials immediately began in a bid to replicate the behaviour in other batches before any announcements could be made. No longer would we be planting vegetables such as cabbage using the four for us and "one for the slugs" ratios.
The team successfully bred further batches. The next step was to try and cross breed the super slugs with common slugs in a way that retained the new traits so that these could be passed on through future generations and spread geographically. Finally, early in 2013 they were able to demonstrate that they had achieved this aim and were able to produce super slug/common slug offspring which retained the genetic propensity intended, and to do so consistently. They were ready to publish their results to the world. In May 2013, a three day conference was organised to disseminate the findings to experts in the field prior to wider publication. A press conference was due to take place two weeks after the conference for this purpose.
However, whilst Dr. Carr was attending the conference in Leeds, some 20 miles away, his elderly mother, Mavis, who was staying with him temporarily whilst her flat was decorated, decided that she would help about the place by doing some weeding in his absence. Searching for gardening tools, she entered the part of the converted barn serving as the research facility. As she moved further into the area, she observed row upon row of trays filled with plants which were obviously part of her son's research (she wasn't really sure exactly what his work encompassed). However, to her horror, she also noticed that they had been overrun by a super-abundance of black, slimy slugs. Thinking that she ought to try and save the plants before they were eaten by the infestation, she took the next bus to Mytholmroyd, a small village some four miles away, and purchased two very large containers of slug pellets.
When Dr. Carr returned from Leeds, his mother informed him, with pride, what she had encountered in the research facility, but told him not to worry, most of the plants were still alive and that she was sure she had managed to kill each and every slug. The reality was that all of his breeding stock had been wiped out and all that he was left with were his research papers and the knowledge that he had achieved his goal, even if he was not going to be able to replicate it, because all his subjects were dead. The project had cost more than £2.5million over its lifetime. It is thought that the research has since been taken over by another expert in the field, Jean Pilkington, although a wall of secrecy prevents this being made public.
PA
The team successfully bred further batches. The next step was to try and cross breed the super slugs with common slugs in a way that retained the new traits so that these could be passed on through future generations and spread geographically. Finally, early in 2013 they were able to demonstrate that they had achieved this aim and were able to produce super slug/common slug offspring which retained the genetic propensity intended, and to do so consistently. They were ready to publish their results to the world. In May 2013, a three day conference was organised to disseminate the findings to experts in the field prior to wider publication. A press conference was due to take place two weeks after the conference for this purpose.
However, whilst Dr. Carr was attending the conference in Leeds, some 20 miles away, his elderly mother, Mavis, who was staying with him temporarily whilst her flat was decorated, decided that she would help about the place by doing some weeding in his absence. Searching for gardening tools, she entered the part of the converted barn serving as the research facility. As she moved further into the area, she observed row upon row of trays filled with plants which were obviously part of her son's research (she wasn't really sure exactly what his work encompassed). However, to her horror, she also noticed that they had been overrun by a super-abundance of black, slimy slugs. Thinking that she ought to try and save the plants before they were eaten by the infestation, she took the next bus to Mytholmroyd, a small village some four miles away, and purchased two very large containers of slug pellets.
When Dr. Carr returned from Leeds, his mother informed him, with pride, what she had encountered in the research facility, but told him not to worry, most of the plants were still alive and that she was sure she had managed to kill each and every slug. The reality was that all of his breeding stock had been wiped out and all that he was left with were his research papers and the knowledge that he had achieved his goal, even if he was not going to be able to replicate it, because all his subjects were dead. The project had cost more than £2.5million over its lifetime. It is thought that the research has since been taken over by another expert in the field, Jean Pilkington, although a wall of secrecy prevents this being made public.
PA
