PollenNet: Using pollinators to increase farm resilience

2019冠状病毒病大流行加剧了满足授粉需求以确保果树和许多其他作物获得最佳作物产量的持续挑战。由于封锁期间禁止从南欧进口蜜蜂，养蜂人无法补充蜜蜂种群。我们迫切需要创新，使我们的授粉服务更具弹性。支持和增加野生传粉媒介数量的农业管理做法将减少对进口蜜蜂的依赖，并使作物生产更具弹性。对传粉媒介生态学的良好理解是促进野生传粉媒介管理策略的基础。然而，昆虫生物多样性监测项目遭遇了挫折，因为其中大多数项目依赖于在封锁期间暂停的志愿者监测。为了应对这些挑战，“花粉网”项目将试行一种创新设备，用于低成本自动监测水果作物的传粉媒介丰度。对传粉媒介的自动化监测是农艺管理的一个阶段性变化，每天持续地对整个农场的昆虫访问进行计数，使农民更容易获得传粉媒介访问的信息。有了这些信息，农民可以决定是否购买蜜蜂，移动现有的蜜蜂栖息地，理想情况下，创造栖息地以鼓励野生授粉者，减少对购买蜜蜂的依赖。因此，实施自动化授粉监测有助于缓解新冠肺炎大流行带来的挑战，确保有足够的信息支持有效授粉和传粉者管理。

The COVID19 pandemic has exacerbated ongoing challenges with meeting pollination needs to ensure optimal crop yields in fruit trees and many other crops. Bee farmers have been unable to replenish bee populations as imports of bees from southern Europe were stopped in the lockdown. Innovations that make our pollination services more resilient are urgently needed. Agricultural management practices that support and increase the abundance of wild pollinators will reduce reliance on imported bees and result in more resilient crop production. A good understanding of pollinator ecology underpins management strategies to promote wild pollinators. However, insect biodiversity monitoring programmes have suffered setbacks as most of them rely on volunteer surveillance which were on hold during the lockdown.To address these challenges, the PollenNet project will pilot an innovative new device for low-cost automated monitoring of pollinator abundance on fruit crops. Automated monitoring of pollinators is a step-change in agronomic management with continuous daily counting of insect visitation across a farm making information on pollinator visitation more accessible to farmers. With this information, farmers can make decisions about whether to purchase bees, move existing bee habitats and ideally, create habitats to encourage wild pollinators, reducing reliance on purchased bees. As such, implementation of automated pollination monitoring helps to mitigate challenges with ensuring sufficient information supports effective pollination and pollinator management presented by the covid-19 pandemic.