Managing the Activity of Pollinators in Protected Cropping Systems (MAPP-CS)

Context: The UK produces around £600m of soft-fruit annually, comprising 650,000 tonnes of fruit per year. Production via enclosed systems such as vertical farms, enclosed polytunnels, and poly-houses/glasshouses is increasing and completely dependent on managed pollinators to provide pollen transfer for fruit-set. Commercial growers are facing large challenges to maintain profitable with increasing energy, water, fertiliser, and labour costs and availability. Growers therefore must increase production efficiency to meet these challenges. Pollination and the impact on fruit quantity and quality is a major route to achieving this. When soft-fruit (e.g. strawberry) is optimally pollinated it has higher yield, quality and nutritional profile, and so is more profitable. Pollination is usually delivered to indoor crops by managed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris in Europe, including UK), but other commercially produced pollinators are available (honeybees, mason bees, hoverflies).

Challenge: PACE growing systems suffer from poor pollinator performance because pollinating insects are less active, have higher mortality and bumblebees often do not return to the nest, resulting in lower fruit yields and quality and the hive expiring more quickly. This has significant economic impacts on growers. The reasons for these behaviours may relate to the ambient light and other environmental factors. It is important to understand the role of challenges such as: the highly homogeneous crop appearance and scent, causing pollinators to struggle orient and find their way home; rising/setting sun appearing as an indistinct, partly-diffused point-source that disrupts orientation; and supplementary lighting interfering with navigation and task-focus due to light spectral properties that are unfamiliar to bees or that make search tasks more difficult.

Aims and objectives: We will research the drivers of pollinator underperformance in enclosed systems, including lighting and navigational factors, and trial a range of affordable interventions to improve pollinator activity and reduce mortality. Experiments will include both bioassays in controlled laboratory conditions and larger-scale trials on growers' sites, to identify and then test interventions to improve crop productivity and pollinator health.

The main objectives are to:

Calculate the impacts of under-pollination for growers;
Assess the performance of complementary pollination (e.g. air-blowing, and hoverflies) in target crops on commercial sites (poly-houses/glasshouses and vertical farms);
Evaluate highly innovative light-attenuating films and other affordable interventions to improve pollinator crop-focus and the resultant efficacy of pollination including:
interventions for suitability and trade-offs with crop performance
how to optimise the environment for pollinator welfare and performance
longevity of interventions through the season and between years
Applications and benefits: By identifying causes of pollinator mortality and poor crop-focus, and assessing affordable solutions, farms will see reduced waste of managed pollinators, and improve pollination and thus fruit quality and yield. This will result in lower fruit waste, and increased production efficiency and sustainable growing as more yield is produced with fewer inputs. Grower revenues will increase from the improved yields, driving further investment and production within the UK, and with greater domestic production the need for imports will be reduced. UK consumers will benefit from better quality fruit without increasing prices.