Agriculture: Dwindling bee pollination serious concern for sustainable agriculture and food production

#agriculture #yield #organicfarming #pollination #bees #honeybees

A large proportion of agricultural yield in crop farming, gardening and fruit production depends on pollination by bees. The crop yield is significantly higher with pollination by bees. This applies to all kinds of fruit such as apples, strawberries and cherries, almost all oilseeds such as rapeseed, linseed and safflower, and all kinds of vegetables such as beans, peas and cucumbers. The seed production of fodder crops and vegetables also benefits from bee pollination.

The flowers that are pollinated by bees form fruit that is much larger, heavier and better shaped. They are also much better quality.

The increase in yield in some of the crops due to bee pollination:-

1. Mustard - 43%

2. Sunflower - 32-48%

3. Cotton - 17-19%

4. Onion - 93%

5. Apple - 44%

With increased use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, bee population has been declining effecting our food production. So, natural organic farming combined with placing bee hives in proper place in the agricultural fields improves yield drastically.

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TNAU Agritech Portal :: Sustainable Agriculture

Bee visits plants for its food, nectar and pollen. This floral fidelity of bees is due to their preference for nectars having sugar contents and pollens with higher nutritive values. Besides getting food for the bees as a result of their visit pollinate a number of crops.

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

Source: Sciencemag.org

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.

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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.