Sunday, 21 June 2020

Agritech: Drone-delivered soap bubbles could help pollinate flowers, a research study shows


Bee population is dwindling due to consistent use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and others, having adverse impact on natural pollination and consequent agricultural productivity. As pollinators, bees are hard to beat. Still, that hasn’t prevented researchers from working on a high-tech alternative: drones that blow soap bubbles to transport pollen to a flower.

One advantage of using bubbles rather than feather brushes is that the bubbles require a lot less pollen. A feather brush, the researchers found, applies about 1800 milligrams of pollen to each flower, whereas the bubbles needed only 0.06 milligrams. That means farmers would have to gather far less pollen before manually pollinating their flowers, if they’re adding it to a soap solution.

Still, I prefer to add beehives (we can purchase them) by keep them at unreachable heights in your agricultural fields, rather than using drones with pollen bubble guns to pollinate our plants and vegetables.

Read on

Drone-delivered soap bubbles could help pollinate flowers

As pollinators, bees are hard to beat. Still, that hasn't prevented researchers from working on a high-tech alternative: drones that blow soap bubbles to transport pollen to a flower. It's a "really cool" approach, says Henry Williams, a roboticist at the University of Auckland, who was not involved in the work.

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