The Role of Annual Flowering Plant Strips on a Melon Crop in Central Spain. Influence on Pollinators and Crop

Abstract

Planting flower strips adjacent to crops is among the habitat-management practices employed to offer alternative floral resources to pollinators. However, more information is needed to understand their potential spill-over of pollinators on nearby insect-pollinated crops. Over the course of two consecutive years, the suitability of a flower mixture of 10 herbaceous plants for pollinators was evaluated on a weekly basis, in a randomized block design of two melon plots (10 × 10 m2) with or without 1 m-wide flower strips. Floral coverage and pollinator visits to the plant species, as well as pollinator visits and the yield and quality of the crop, were assessed. Additionally, the selected mixture was tested for 1 year in a commercial field in order to ascertain how far the flower strip could influence visitors in the crop. The most suitable species for a flower strip in central Spain based on their attractiveness, floral coverage and staggered blossom were Coriandrum sativum L., Diplotaxis virgata L., Borago officinalis L. and Calendula officinalis L. The flower strip can act as either pollinator competitor or facilitator to the crop, depending on their floral coverage and/or the predominant species during the crop bloom period. The concurrence of blooming of the rewarding plant C. officinalis with the melon crop should be avoided in our area. In the commercial field, the bee visitation rate in the melon flowers decreased with the distance to the flower strip. No influence of the specific flower strip evaluated on crop productivity or quality was found.

Annual Wildflower Strips as a Tool for Enhancing Functional Biodiversity in Rye Fields in an Organic Cultivation System

“…This result is consistent with the spatial pattern of staphylinid, carabid and spider activity density, and also the species richness observed in the adjacency of annual WFS in rapeseed fields in Germany [13]. A poor distance effect was found in a study of pollinators in melon fields in Spain, where the positive WFS effect on pollinator visit frequency was only detectable at a distance of less than 10 m from the WFS [15]. A few other studies considered just two distances from a WFS.…”

“…Several studies have investigated the effects of annual WFSs on crop field biodiversity in Europe, e.g., in maize in Germany [13], in cereals in Belgium [14], in melon crops in Spain [15] and in red clover in Sweden [16]. These studies show that establishing annual WFSs can be effective means for increasing both taxonomical and functional diversity of insects in crop fields.…”

‘Farming with alternative pollinators’ approach supports diverse and abundant pollinator community in melon fields in a semi-arid landscape

“…Albrecht et al (2020) highlighted the need to better understand the drivers that lead to success or failure of flower strips to promote pollination service. Our case study confirms Azpiazu et al (2020) that some edge flowering plants can have common pollinators with the main crop. The MHEP which hosted the same key flower visitors of melon are sunflower and zucchini, and, to a lesser extent, basil, but basil occupied a smaller area than the other MHEP (Fig.…”

“Farming with Alternative Pollinators” approach increases pollinator abundance and diversity in faba bean fields

“…Coriander is characterized by several pollinatorattractive traits (e.g. exposed nectar, abundant pollen production, high floral coverage and open flowers) allowing a great variety of flower visiting insect species to access its' flower rewards (Bendifallah et al 2013;Azpiazu et al 2020). Though, the majority of studies on coriander pollinators did not report visits of long tongue bees (Singh et al 2010;Bendifallah et al 2013;Sharma and Meena 2019).…”