Insect-pollinated crops provide important nutrients for human health. Pollination, water and nutrients available to crops can influence yield, but it is not known if the nutritional value of the crop is also influenced. Almonds are an important source of critical nutrients for human health such as unsaturated fat and vitamin E. We manipulated the pollination of almond trees and the resources av...

Pear decline is a very important phytoplasma disease that causes considerable quantitative and qualitative losses to this fruit crop. Due to economical importance of pear in Isfahan province, Iran, and the difficulty to determine the occurrence of the disease simply based on symptoms in orchards, a detection method for the phytoplasma causing disease in pears in the region was developed. Since ...

The honey bee is a major insect used for pollination of many commercial crops worldwide. Although the use of honey bees for pollination can disrupt the habitat, the effects on their physiology have never been determined. Recently, honey bee colonies have often collapsed when introduced in greenhouses for pollination in Japan. Thus, suppressing colony collapses and maintaining the number of work...

Tropical biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions have become heavily eroded through habitat loss. Animal-mediated pollination is required in more than 94% of higher tropical plant species and 75% of the world's leading food crops, but it remains unclear if corridors avert deforestation-driven pollination breakdown in fragmented tropical landscapes. Here, we used manipulative resource ex...

Considerable infonnation has been developed on floral induction and the flowering process in Citrus in the papers which precede this one. Flower induction is a prerequisite to fruit production, so it is very important to have a clear understanding ofthe process. However, simply producing large numbers offlowers does not necessarily guarantee a subsequent large crop of fruit to harvest when they...

Pollen limitation of female fecundity is widespread among angiosperms, a signal that pollinators frequently fail to transfer pollen to fertilize all ovules. Recent surveys have suggested that pollen limitation is associated with floral specialization. This study uses a group of Antillean Gesneriaceae with contrasting pollination systems (bat, hummingbird, and generalist) to assess the premise t...

18 The effect of the pollination time and of the pollen origin was studied in three self-compatible 19 and late-blooming almond genotypes in order to evaluate their effect on fruit set and yield. 20 The full self-compatibility of the three genotypes was clearly assessed as fruit sets after self21 pollination were similar to those obtained after cross-pollination with pollen from two 22 differen...

for sexual reproduction of allium hirtifolium, collected bulbs were planted in the field. in order to develop ovary embryo and seed setting, control self-pollination and natural open pollination took placed using honey bees under cages. ovary development and seed setting of a. hirtifolium extraordinary were affected by pollination and there was a significant difference between mean effect of se...

The interactions between plants and pollinators are complex. Flower volatiles as special olfactory cues could influence the foraging choices of pollinators. Here, we conducted bioassays to evaluate role flower on attraction honey bees (native Apis cerana exotic mellifera) pears Pyrus bretschneideri communis). Chemical electrophysiological approaches were used determine antennal responses from p...