Yield benefits of additional pollination to faba bean vary with cultivar, scale, yield parameter and experimental method.

ABSTRACT: The benefits of insect pollination to crop yield are used to justify management decisions across agricultural landscapes but current methods for assessing these benefits may underestimate the importance of context. We quantify how the effects of simulated insect pollination vary between five faba bean cultivars, and to what extent this changes between years, scales, yield parameters, and experimental methods. We do this by measuring responses to standardised hand pollination treatments in controlled experiments in flight cages and in the field. Pollination treatments generally improved yield, but in some cases yield was lower with additional pollination. Pollination dependence varied with cultivar, ranging from 58% (loss in yield mass per plant without pollination) in one cultivar, to a lo

SUBMITTER: Bishop J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7005869 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature