Avoiding a bad apple: Insect pollination enhances fruit quality and economic value.

ABSTRACT: Insect pollination is important for food production globally and apples are one of the major fruit crops which are reliant on this ecosystem service. It is fundamentally important that the full range of benefits of insect pollination to crop production are understood, if the costs of interventions aiming to enhance pollination are to be compared against the costs of the interventions themselves. Most previous studies have simply assessed the benefits of pollination to crop yield and ignored quality benefits and how these translate through to economic values. In the present study we examine the influence of insect pollination services on farmgate output of two important UK apple varieties; Gala and Cox. Using field experiments, we quantify the influence of insect pollination on yield and im

SUBMITTER: Garratt MP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3990452 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature