Plant and Pollination Blindness: Risky Business for Human Food Security

Farmers’ Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Pollination and Bees in a Maize-Producing Region of Zimbabwe: Implications for Pollinator Conservation

“…Many farmers invest in fertilizers, pest control, water management, and other management activities for their crops and no or little investment toward the provision of the important pollination services for the crops (Alemu, 2014). This pollination blindness results in poor pollination services that then negatively impact on yield with farmers not knowing (Burkle et al., 2017; Oliveira et al., 2019).…”

“…Despite the importance of pollinators for production of up to three-quarters of the crops cultivated worldwide (Klein et al., 2007; Potts et al., 2016), pollination, especially by wild insects, is seldom considered as an important production factor in agriculture (Bommarco et al., 2018; Oliveira et al., 2019). Consequently, most agrarian communities who are strong beneficiaries of pollinators are still in areas with limited information on pollinators (Bhattacharyya et al., 2017).…”

Cross-Pollination Produces Arabica Coffee Beans with Higher Caffeine and Lower Fatty Acid

“…For each experiment, four different branches and all of the flower buds in the branch (approximately 30-80 flowers), depends on the availability, were bagged with nylon mesh (Ø 1 mm). The pollination experiments: (1) closed pollination group, flowers bagged with nylon mesh, to exclude insect pollination; (2) hand pollination group, pollen of same flowers transferred to other stigmas in the same plant with a fine brush then bagged with nylon mesh to imitate self-pollination; (3) open pollination, all bloomed flowers uncovered which allow insect and wind pollination; (4) T. laeviceps pollination, bloomed flowers visited by T. laeviceps bagged with nylon mesh until fruit produced. The level of pollination success was measured by the proportion of fruit produced from the total observed flowers.…”

“…As one of the important ecological services in agricultural systems, pollination service in nature is the result of the interaction between plants and animals, especially insects [1,2]. This Pollination services help to maintain the biodiversity of the plant and productivity of major crops, which is strongly related to human food security [3]. Furtherly, studies showed the importance of the pollinator, mostly insects, especially bees, for crop and economic plant production and economic benefit derived from the products of insectpollinated plants [4,5].…”

Why the views of Latin American Scientists on Citizen Science as a Tool for Pollinator Monitoring and Conservation Matter?

“…(2) promote environmental and scientific literacy (education); (3) promote scientific communication and raise public awareness (sci com); (4) willingness to fulfill an ethical and civic duty (ethical values); (5) support public policy and decision-making (public policy). Terms that could not be classified into one of these categories were included in the generic category "others" (Frigerio et al 2018), and to contribute to reducing plant blindness and their reproductive processes and their implications (Balding & Williams 2016, Oliveira et al 2019. Thus, faced with this better understanding of the attitudes and the interests of Latin American scientists towards CS, we suggest five interrelated strategies that can be taken by policy-makers and decision-makers to attract and engage scientists in long-term pollinator monitoring and conservation programs as well as in actions that aim to promote changes in society, and transform society's relationship with nature and pollinators.…”