Floral Patches and Their Impact on Pollinator Attraction and Yield Production on Cucurbita maxima Var. Paine in Central Chile

Abstract

In recent decades, it has been shown that pollination deficit can significantly affect crop production. Moreover, now it is known that the appropriate management of pollination can increase the quantity and quality of yields. Therefore, pollination appears to be a key component in modern agriculture. This study aimed to determine the impact of floral patch addition on the quality and quantity of Cucurbita maxima fruit production. To this end, we manually added a set of ornamental plant species to the edge of the crop and monitored the pollinator diversity and visit frequency, as well as the seed set and sugar content of the pumpkin yield, in treatment and control parcels. The results showed that there was a higher visit rate in the treated parcel. Only the sugar content, and not the seed set, was affected by the addition of ornamental species and the pollinator visit rate. These findings indicate that the addition of flowering plants can favor different components of the crop yield of this species, but future studies should sample on a broader spatial and temporal scale in order to certify the generalizability of our results.

The Diversity of pollinator insects in vegetable gardens, Kabawo District, Muna Regency

“…Mutualistic interactions between insect pollinators and plant flowers are key biotic factors that play an important role in the successful reproduction of plants through pollination [1][2][3]. The production of fruit and seeds from flowering plants that are consumed by humans is highly dependent on the presence of pollinators in tropical ecosystems [4,5]. Nutrient content (such as lipids in the form of oil, available vitamin C, available folate, vitamin A, provitamin A, and α-and γ-tocopherol), and several minerals in fruit and flowers consumed for the maintenance of human health come from flowering plants that depend on insect pollinators [6].…”