Study: Pollination of plants by hand...Does it make humans a substitute for bees?

In the eighteenth century Spanish explorers brought the vanilla plant from Mexico to Europe.

The cultivation of this aromatic orchid, however, failed because the animal pollinators that transmit male pollen to female flowers were not present in their natural range.

In 1841, a young man on the island of Reunion discovered a relatively simple method that helps to pollinate the plant manually using a small wooden stick, and this method is still used today in pollinating the vanilla plant, for example, in Madagascar, which is the main source of the vanilla plant today.

This example is not rare evidence of such a peculiar form of plant cultivation.

According to a study conducted by researchers in the German cities of Göttingen and Honheim, the method of manual insemination is much more widespread than one might think.

These scientists recently wrote in the scientific journal "Basic and Applied Ecology" that 20% of plants are fully or partially fertilized manually, and of these plants are types of economic importance such as apples, cocoa, tomatoes and oil palm, whose production volume exceeds four million tons annually, as well as Plants with lower yields such as marajoia, pistachio and vanilla.

"We had initially assumed that manual pollination was used primarily in plant cultivation, but it was surprising to us to find such a large number of examples among useful plants," said Annemarie Würz, first author of the study from the University of Göttingen.

But why do people do tasks that nature does on its own?

The most common reason for this is the lack of natural pollinators, which in many cases is impossible to cultivate.

A study by ecologist Alexandra-Maria Klein of the University of Freiburg in Germany in 2007 concluded that animal pollinators, including bees, other insects, birds or bats, provide or increase about 75% of the world's 115 most important and beneficial food crops.

A team led by Klein, who is a professor of nature conservation and natural environmental sciences, showed that food production's dependence on animal pollinators increased between 1961 and 2006, due to a significant increase in the proportion of land under pollinator-dependent crops.

At the same time, the number of studies has increased showing that the number and diversity of insects declined in many regions of the world, and experts attributed this decline to the destruction of many habitats, among which reasons are the intensification of agriculture “with the increasing disappearance of the areas designated for flowers. This factor, in addition to the use of pesticides, has led to Dip insects and other pollinators.

Is there a relationship between the disappearance of insects on the one hand and the increase in manual pollination on the other?

Such a conclusion cannot be drawn directly from the review provided by the researchers, and Klein said, "We lack a database for this."

In this context, the example of "human bees" is often cited in China, where the province of Xuan had expanded apple cultivation significantly in the eighties of the last century, and as a result, the use of pesticides on farms increased, which in turn led to a strong decline in pollinating insects, as the researchers separated in their article.

Experts added that beekeepers are now refusing to set up their hives near farms because of pesticide contamination.

Crops declined and this eventually led to humans climbing trees to pollinate, which involved so much effort that farmers quickly switched to other crops that could self-pollinate.

The shortage of insects and animal pollinators is not an inevitable result of the lack of species, as some useful plants are grown outside the environment of their own propagation, as happened in the example of the vanilla plant.

Such developments of manual pollination can be understood through the high demand for many types of fruits that people prefer to have throughout the year, and Klein believes that this increases the requirements that must be met by cultivated plants. “Plants must be resistant to pests and must be adapted to climate change with Producing the largest possible amount of the crop, which brings the plant cultivation process to its maximum potential.”

The researchers believed that climate change could increase the importance of manual pollination on a large scale in the future.

There are farmers who already see today that bad weather conditions are the reason for using such methods.

Storms at flowering time can prevent insects from flying and may result in a complete loss of the crop if the flowering period is too short.

The researchers added that the expected increase in extreme weather conditions could create the conditions for such situations, and that climatic changes could lead to diverging paths between plants and animal pollinators, making it difficult for the natural pollination process.

The research team led by Fortes believed that the general expansion of manual pollination of plants is the wrong way. "Wherever natural pollination is available or can be restored, this type should be a priority because it represents the most efficient, most appropriate and most appropriate pollination option," Fortes said. for biodiversity".

She added: "The method of manual insemination can be understood as a first aid that can be provided in the event that natural insemination is not possible for any reason."

Klein ruled out that manual pollination will be used on a large scale in the future, noting that this method could have negative effects, "This may lead to excessive pollination of flowers (manually), which negatively affects the quality of the fruits, and this is an unbelievably complicated matter as It's too expensive after all."

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