INNOVATION FOR IMPROVED STRAWBERRY POLLINATION BY COMMERCIAL BUMBLEBEES USING CAFFEINE

昆虫，特别是蜜蜂的有效授粉，对于确保粮食安全和许多农作物的产量至关重要。在英国，草莓等软水果的年产量约为3.6亿英磅，每年都在增长，但在很大程度上依赖昆虫授粉，尤其是蜜蜂。当授粉不充分时，常常会导致果实畸形。由于农业生态系统中野生传粉者数量不足，草莓种植者严重依赖商业购买的大黄蜂群体来试图改善授粉，但这并不总是足够的。尽管销售潜力不大，但畸形水果仍然必须收获，以控制害虫，否则会在果实上堆积，因此授粉不足会给种植者带来巨大的不必要成本。成功的水果生产需要蜜蜂在同一作物品种的花之间携带花粉。觅食的蜜蜂通常专攻一种物种，这有助于确保这种花粉的转移。植物通过提供蜜蜂记住的独特的花香、颜色或形状等独特的线索来鼓励这一点。低剂量的咖啡因使蜜蜂更准确地记住花香等线索，并增加蜜蜂的觅食活动。该项目将调查是否有可能在草莓农场引诱受管理的大黄蜂更喜欢吃草莓花，以便更有效地为它们授粉。该项目将进行实验，以测试咖啡因在田间和实验室环境中改善作物授粉的能力。大黄蜂将被试验性地提供含有咖啡因的花蜜和合成草莓花的气味。由于咖啡因可以改善蜜蜂对花香的记忆，该项目将测试这些蜜蜂在接受这种引发处理时是否表现出更强的觅食活动和对草莓花的吸引力。我们预测，如果商业熊蜂对草莓的偏好得到改善，蜜蜂将访问更多的花朵，更有效地为作物授粉，从而能够生产出更高质量、更有价值的水果。这项技术的田间试验将在使用熊蜂为草莓作物授粉的农场进行，测量这种熊蜂引发技术产生的水果质量和产量。室外试验还将得到实验室和半现场试验的支持，这些试验优化了该系统，以获得最佳剂量和引爆系统的时机。最终的经济评估将与投资于这项研究的合作私营部门利益相关者项目一起进行，他们将考虑使用咖啡因引发的蜜蜂对农民的潜在经济利益。我们预计，大黄蜂提供的授粉服务增强的证据将提供一个令人信服的商业机会，增加蜂群供应的价值，并最终可能导致其他授粉者依赖的作物物种增强授粉和结果。

Efficient pollination by insects, especially bees, is critical to ensuring food security and yields of many crops. Production of soft fruit such as strawberries in the UK is worth around £360m annually, is growing year on year but depends heavily upon pollination by insects, particularly bees. When pollination is inadequate it frequently results in misshapen fruit. Owing to inadequate numbers of wild pollinators in agricultural ecosystems, strawberry growers rely heavily on commercially-bought colonies of bumblebees to try to improve pollination, but this is not always sufficient. Misshapen fruit must still be harvested despite poor sales potential in order to control pest insects that otherwise build up on them, so under-pollination causes a significant unwanted cost to growers.Successful fruit production requires bees to carry pollen between flowers of the same crop species. Foraging bees often specialise on one species, which helps ensure this pollen transfer. Plants encourage this by providing distinctive cues such as unique flower odours, colours or shape which bees remember. Low doses of caffeine make bees remember cues such as floral odour more accurately, and increase bees' foraging activity. This project will investigate whether it is possible to prime managed bumblebees on strawberry farms to prefer foraging on the flowers of the crop, in order to pollinate them more effectively.The project will carry out experiments to test the ability of caffeine to improve crop pollination in field and laboratory settings. Bumblebees will be provided experimentally with caffeinated nectar alongside a synthetic strawberry flower's scent. Since caffeine improves bees' memory for the scents of flowers, the project will test whether these bees show increased foraging activity and attraction to strawberry flowers when they receive this priming treatment. We predict that if the preference of commercial bumblebees for strawberries is improved, the bees will visit more flowers, be more efficient at pollinating the crop and thus will enable the production of higher-quality, more valuable fruit.Field tests of this technology will be performed on working farms using bumblebees to pollinate their strawberry crop, measuring fruit quality and yield resulting from this bumblebee-priming technology. The outdoor trials will also be supported by laboratory and semi-field experiments that optimise this system to get the best dose and timing of the priming system. A final economic assessment in consultation with the projects collaborative private sector stakeholders who have invested in this research will consider the potential financial benefits to the farmer of using caffeine-primed bees.We anticipate that evidence for enhanced pollination services delivered by bumblebees will provide a compelling commercial opportunity that adds value to bee colony provision and could ultimately lead to enhanced pollination and fruit set in other pollinator dependent crop species.