Precision Pollination Strategies for Advancing Horticultural Tomato Crop Production

Abstract

Global climate change and anthropological activities have led to a decline in insect pollinators worldwide. Agricultural globalisation and intensification have also removed crops from their natural insect pollinators, and sparked research to identify alternate natural insect pollinators and artificial technologies. In certain countries such as Australia the importation of commercial insect pollinators is prohibited, necessitating manual labour to stimulate floral pollination. Artificial pollination technologies are now increasingly essential as the demand for food grown in protected facilities increases worldwide. For tomato fruits, precision pollination has the ability to vastly improve their seed set, size, yield, and quality under optimal environmental conditions and has become financially beneficial. Like many crops from the Solanaceae, tomatoes have a unique self-pollinating mechanism that requires stimulation of the floral organs to release pollen from the poricidal anthers. This review investigates various mechanisms employed to pollinate tomato flowers and discusses emerging precision pollination technologies. The advantages and disadvantages of various pollinating technologies currently available in the protected-cropping industry are described. We provide a buzz perspective on new promising pollination technologies involving robotic air and acoustic devices that are still in their nascency and could provide non-contact techniques to automate pollination for the tomato horticultural industry.

Opportunities and challenges for strawberry cultivation in urban food production systems

“…Provision of pollination for farms that restrict the entrance of pollinators, can take place with (a) brush pollination for small scale trials; (b) wind pollination by either static or handheld fans; (c) introduction of pollinators, such as the commercially used Bombus sp. in glasshouses or other insects such as Chaetospihon fragaefolii (Van Oystaeyen et al, 2022); or (d) the use of autonomous pollination drones that pollinate with mechanical or sonic vibration (Dingley et al, 2022; Hulens et al, 2022).…”

Shape classification technology of pollinated tomato flowers for robotic implementation

“…A total of 1.8 million tons of tomato are produced annually, followed by onions (1.04 million tons) and cucumbers (0.91 million tons) 18 . Tomato are the most popular crops but have many cultivation problems, including pollination 19 . Pollination involves the pollens being created in the stamens, which pollinates the pistils to bear seeds and fruits.…”

Sonic-induced cellular vibrations disrupt poricidal cone trichomes to boost tomato floral pollination

“…Precision artificial pollination services have potential to add value by sustaining ecological biodiversity and enhancing horticultural crop production 11 .…”

“…The demand for automating artificial pollination has prompted the development of electronic wands capable of inducing plant vibrations, as well as the utilization of drones and air jets to create mechanical stimulation of flowers. These methods replicate the natural interactions between plants and insects during foraging, facilitating the dispersion of pollen [11][12][13] . Artificial vibration devices significantly increase floral self-pollination compared with a no-pollination control, although elicit inferior outcomes compared with bee pollinators that have different capacities to generate buzz-induced vibrations [13][14][15] .…”

“…The arrangement of poricidal anthers found in tomato flowers are distinguished between insects on the proxy of their vibration capacities 24 . The efficacy of low-level mechanical vibrational frequencies of flowers generated by artificial devices, are like those produced by bees, and can adequately pollinate glasshouse-grown tomatoes 11 .…”