Identifying and assessing pollination deficits in crops

Abstract

Expansion and intensifcation of local agriculture is usually carried out at the cost of decreasing natural habitat and habitat complexity, potentially afecting biodiversity and important ecosystem services (Freitas et al. 2009). Developing local, sustainable agriculture is therefore one of the major challenges of humanity. Sustainable agriculture relies on highly diverse and stable ecosystem services that underpin agricultural production, such as nutrient cycling, natural pest control and animal pollination. However, the importance of such ecosystem services for farming success has rarely been evaluated for real-world farms (small scale farming being particularly under-studied). The decline of pollinators and their pollination services is documented in a growing number of areas in the world, while pollination defcits have been associated with important crop yield losses (Garibaldi et al. 2011a). Thus there is a growing need to identify and assess pollination defcits in a large array of crops in order to better mitigate and protect against crop losses in the event of pollination defcits.