Entomological Society of NSW Online Seminar Series

Speaker: James M. Cook

Seminar Link - all welcome

 https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/42135387340207?p=lD11ChwO99EhdAzR50

Seminar title: Harnessing native insect pollinators for glasshouse strawberry production

Friday 17th July 11am

Horticultural crops are increasingly grown in polytunnels or glasshouses, which partly or fully exclude wild pollinators. However, in many crops, pollination is key to good fruit quality, so glasshouse pollination must be actively managed. Honeybees, the usual suspects, are a poor option in glasshouses, so we have been testing native bees and flies as managed pollinators of glasshouse strawberries at the National Vegetable Protected Cropping Centre in Richmond, NSW. We used a series of controlled experiments where individual flowers were allocated to one of three main treatments: 1) open (insect) pollination, 2) hand pollination, 3) no pollination (bagged control). In some cases, we also compared outcomes from controlled numbers of insect visits per flower. Overall, we found that two stingless bee species, a hoverfly and a blow fly all increased fruit size and quality substantially in comparison with controls, despite interesting behavioural differences. In addition, there is a general difference in approach when using stingless bees or flies. The flies can be purchased as pupae and applied to the crop as a one-off “treatment”, whereas hive bees are valuable perennial livestock whose health also needs to be managed. Notably, stingless bee colonies decreased in weight and activity within a few weeks when kept in a strawberry monoculture, but we were able to maintain or increase colony weight and activity by providing additional (non-crop) floral resources.

 Bio

James Cook is a Professor in Entomology at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University. He has lived in the UK, Kenya and Australia and has a lifelong passion for natural history. His major academic interest is in the wide range of interactions between plants and insect pollinators. Currently, his research team focuses on insect pollinators and the services that they provide to both horticultural crops and wild plants, with a particular emphasis on the role of native bees and flies in orchards and protected cropping.