Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries
Pollination of insect pollinated crops has been found to be correlated to pollinator abundance and diversity. Since organic farming has the potential to mitigate negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity, it may also benefit crop pollination, but direct evidence of this is sca...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2012
|
| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3280308/ |
| id |
pubmed-3280308 |
|---|---|
| recordtype |
oai_dc |
| spelling |
pubmed-32803082012-02-21 Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries Andersson, Georg K. S. Rundlöf, Maj Smith, Henrik G. Research Article Pollination of insect pollinated crops has been found to be correlated to pollinator abundance and diversity. Since organic farming has the potential to mitigate negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity, it may also benefit crop pollination, but direct evidence of this is scant. We evaluated the effect of organic farming on pollination of strawberry plants focusing on (1) if pollination success was higher on organic farms compared to conventional farms, and (2) if there was a time lag from conversion to organic farming until an effect was manifested. We found that pollination success and the proportion of fully pollinated berries were higher on organic compared to conventional farms and this difference was already evident 2–4 years after conversion to organic farming. Our results suggest that conversion to organic farming may rapidly increase pollination success and hence benefit the ecosystem service of crop pollination regarding both yield quantity and quality. Public Library of Science 2012-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3280308/ /pubmed/22355380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0031599 Text en Andersson et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Andersson, Georg K. S. Rundlöf, Maj Smith, Henrik G. |
| spellingShingle |
Andersson, Georg K. S. Rundlöf, Maj Smith, Henrik G. Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries |
| author_facet |
Andersson, Georg K. S. Rundlöf, Maj Smith, Henrik G. |
| author_sort |
Andersson, Georg K. S. |
| title |
Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries |
| title_short |
Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries |
| title_full |
Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries |
| title_fullStr |
Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Organic Farming Improves Pollination Success in Strawberries |
| title_sort |
organic farming improves pollination success in strawberries |
| description |
Pollination of insect pollinated crops has been found to be correlated to pollinator abundance and diversity. Since organic farming has the potential to mitigate negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity, it may also benefit crop pollination, but direct evidence of this is scant. We evaluated the effect of organic farming on pollination of strawberry plants focusing on (1) if pollination success was higher on organic farms compared to conventional farms, and (2) if there was a time lag from conversion to organic farming until an effect was manifested. We found that pollination success and the proportion of fully pollinated berries were higher on organic compared to conventional farms and this difference was already evident 2–4 years after conversion to organic farming. Our results suggest that conversion to organic farming may rapidly increase pollination success and hence benefit the ecosystem service of crop pollination regarding both yield quantity and quality. |
| publisher |
Public Library of Science |
| publishDate |
2012 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3280308/ |
| _version_ |
1611506339709714432 |