Sustainable pollination services for UK crops

授粉是一项关键的生态系统服务，对维持野生植物群落和农业生产力至关重要。昆虫授粉是欧洲84%的农作物和全球75%直接用作人类食物的作物生产所必需的，主要是由蜜蜂授粉的。2005年，全球每年昆虫授粉的经济价值约为1200亿GB，英国约为4.4亿GB。作物授粉服务依赖于驯化和野生传粉者种群，两者都可能受到一系列最近和预计的环境变化的影响，后果未知。近几十年来，人们越来越关注家养和野生传粉者的命运，导致《生物多样性公约》(养护和可持续利用传粉者国际倡议)和一些大陆、国家和区域方案提出了特别倡议。显然，昆虫授粉是一项重要的农业投入。然而，我们目前对农作物的授粉要求、不同蜜蜂和其他昆虫的授粉潜力以及景观、土地利用和气候变化对授粉服务的影响的了解很少。这阻碍了制定有效政策以保护和管理授粉服务的进展。因此，我们建议：首先确定哪些野生传粉者和管理传粉者有助于昆虫依赖型作物(如大多数果树、浆果、油菜、菜豆)的授粉，以及目前野生传粉者的缺乏是否限制了农业生产。第二，使用这些信息来预测景观尺度上的作物授粉赤字(使用建模方法)。第三，确定气候变化是否以及如何影响英国的作物分布，以及到2050年对授粉服务的需求。第四，利用上述结果设计和测试缓解作物授粉不足的方法(即提高受管传粉者的可用性，为野生传粉者提供食物或巢资源)。该项目的成果将提供重要的新颖的科学见解，可用于支持英国农民在作物、景观和传粉者管理实践方面的决策。它还将促进英国走向更可持续的农业。为此，我们将把我们的成果传播给主要的利益相关者(农民、养蜂人、土地管理者、保护机构)，但更关键的是，我们将开始在利益相关者和科学家之间交换信息，以保证我们的研究产生英国农业社区所需的信息。

Pollination is a key ecosystem service, vital to the maintenance both of wild plant communities and agricultural productivity. Insect pollination, mostly by bees, is necessary for production in 84% of all crops in the Europe and 75% of the crops that are used directly as human food worldwide. In 2005, the economic value of insect pollination per year amounted to approximately £120 billion globally and about £440 million in the UK. Crop pollination services depend on both domesticated and wild pollinator populations, and both may be affected by a range of recent and projected environmental changes, with unknown consequences. There has been growing concern in recent decades about the fate of both domesticated and wild pollinators, leading to special initiatives by the Convention for Biodiversity (International Initiative for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Pollinators) and a number of continental, national and regional programmes. Clearly, insect pollination is an important agricultural input. However, our current knowledge about the pollination requirements of crops, the pollination potential of different bees and other insects and the impact of landscape, land use and climate changes on pollination services is poor. This is holding up progress towards designing effective policies to conserve and manage pollination services. Therefore, we propose to: First determine which wild and managed pollinators contribute to pollination of insect-dependent crops (e.g. most fruit trees, berries, oilseed rape, field beans) and whether at present lack of wild pollinators limits agricultural production. Second, to use this information to predict crop pollination deficits at the landscape scale (using modelling approaches). Third, determine whether and how climate change will affect UK crop distributions and the need for pollination services towards 2050. Fourth, use the outcomes of the above to design and test ways to mitigate against crop pollination deficits (i.e. improve availability of managed pollinators, provide food or nest resources for wild pollinators). The outcomes of the project will provide important novel scientific insights that can be used to support UK farmer decisions on crop, landscape and pollinator management practices. It will also facilitate the UK's move towards more sustainable agriculture. To this end we will disseminate our results to the major stakeholders (farmers, beekeepers, land managers, conservation agencies), but even more crucially we will start the exchange of information between stakeholders and scientists to guarantee that our research produces information required by the UK agricultural community.