TY  - JOUR
A1  - Klatt, Björn K.
A1  - Holzschuh, Andrea
A1  - Westphal, Catrin
A1  - Clough, Yann
A1  - Smit, Inga
A1  - Pawelzik, Elke
A1  - Tscharntke, Teja
T1  - Bee pollination improves crop quality, shelf life and commercial value
JF  - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
N2  - Pollination improves the yield of most crop species and contributes to one-third of global crop production, but comprehensive benefits including crop quality are still unknown. Hence, pollination is underestimated by international policies, which is particularly alarming in times of agricultural intensification and diminishing pollination services. In this study, exclusion experiments with strawberries showed bee pollination to improve fruit quality, quantity and market value compared with wind and self-pollination. Bee-pollinated fruits were heavier, had less malformations and reached higher commercial grades. They had increased redness and reduced sugar–acid–ratios and were firmer, thus improving the commercially important shelf life. Longer shelf life reduced fruit loss by at least 11%. This is accounting for 0.32 billion US$ of the 1.44 billion US$ provided by bee pollination to the total value of 2.90 billion US$ made with strawberry selling in the European Union 2009. The fruit quality and yield effects are driven by the pollination-mediated production of hormonal growth regulators, which occur in several pollination-dependent crops. Thus, our comprehensive findings should be transferable to a wide range of crops and demonstrate bee pollination to be a hitherto underestimated but vital and economically important determinant of fruit quality.
KW  - commercial grades
KW  - ecosystem services
KW  - post-harvest quality
KW  - shelf life
KW  - strawberry
KW  - crop yield
KW  - ecology
Y1  - 2014
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-120797
VL  - 281
IS  - 1775
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kehrberger, Sandra
A1  - Holzschuh, Andrea
T1  - How does timing of flowering affect competition for pollinators, flower visitation and seed set in an early spring grassland plant?
JF  - Scientific Reports
N2  - Knowledge on how the timing of flowering is related to plant fitness and species interactions is crucial to understand consequences of phenological shifts as they occur under climate change. Early flowering plants may face advantages of low competition for pollinators and disadvantages of low pollinator abundances and unfavourable weather conditions. However, it is unknown how this trade-off changes over the season and how the timing affects reproductive success. On eight grasslands we recorded intra-seasonal changes in pollinators, co-flowering plants, weather conditions, flower visitation rates, floral longevity and seed set of Pulsatilla vulgaris. Although bee abundances and the number of pollinator-suitable hours were low at the beginning of the season, early flowers of P. vulgaris received higher flower visitation rates and estimated total number of bee visits than later flowers, which was positively related to seed set. Flower visitation rates decreased over time and with increasing number of co-flowering plants, which competed with P. vulgaris for pollinators. Low interspecific competition for pollinators seems to be a major driver for early flowering dates. Thus, non-synchronous temporal shifts of co-flowering plants as they may occur under climate warming can be expected to strongly affect plant-pollinator interactions and the fitness of the involved plants.
KW  - ecology
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-202549
VL  - 9
ER  -