What is it about?
The need for basic information on tropical crop pollinators remains a key priority. Here, we used a dataset on Brazilian bee-crop interactions to determine important bee species for crop pollination and discuss their management in Brazilian croplands. We developed an analytical approach to select key bee species and genera from datasets based on different criteria, selecting only interactions reported as effective pollination events. Data on pollination included 261 records of unique crop-pollinator interaction, 144 bee species, and 23 crops. Despite the importance of social species, solitary bees accounted for 56% of the observed interactions. Of the 14 most important species, eight are solitary and six are social. A few of the selected species are already reared in Brazil, e.g., honeybees and some stingless bees, but practical knowledge on their management for crop pollination is poorly disseminated among farmers, hindering such an application.
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Why is it important?
Due to the high diversity of bees found in tropical regions, and existing knowledge gaps on tropical crop pollination, defining a list of important crop pollinator species and providing suggestions for their management can be extremely useful for both public policy and decision-making processes.
Perspectives
Current knowledge gaps on crop pollinator bees in tropical region must be addressed in order to help decision-making processes, particularly regarding solitary bees and bee management in general. We hope that the list provided here of the most important bee species for crop production can pave the road ahead of other studies and help develop new strategies for the sustainable management and conservation of crop pollinators. We emphasize that most Brazilian farmers are not aware of the benefits of pollination, so that many crops rely exclusively on wild pollinators. For this reason, bee management for crop pollination purposes still needs to be promoted and improved. Since the country has a high production of pollinator-dependent crops, bee management for commercial pollination is a great business opportunity
Full Professor José Mauricio Simões Bento
Universidade de Sao Paulo Campus de Piracicaba
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Unveiling the contribution of bee pollinators to Brazilian crops with implications for bee management, Apidologie, January 2020, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s13592-019-00727-3.
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