The status quo technology for pollinating plants is the honeybees. For bee pollination, timely beehive placement, strength of beehives, activity during cool weather, sufficient bloom and bloom overlap are all concerns for growers.
For large farms with large monoculture crop fields, honeybee pollination involves renting bees which are trucked into to the fields or orchards. When bees are not available for rent or the adequate infrastructure does not exist, bringing in bees may not be an option, and the farmers must provide their own bees or depend on nature to do so.
Several aspects of current agriculture practice are based on using bee pollination, such as the planting of alternating varieties of a crop (in every other row) to increase cross-pollination. Since different varieties of a crop may ripen at different times, such a practice results in multiple harvests and therefore higher costs.
Since 2004, the cost of bees for many crop types has increased as much as five-fold due to decrease in the bee supply, as a result of CCD decimating bee colonies. Farmers are concerned about the continued use of bees as their main form of pollination. Luckily, Pollineering’s process is bee friendly and can be used in conjunction with bees to enhance their pollination efforts.
These factors, combined with the rising cost of bees, aligns our company with the desire farmers have for a far more reliable pollination technology. The benefits of our technology highly incentivize the farmers to use our innovative technology.
Volunteers – Native Bees & Insects
Source: Bob Peterson
A second source of pollination include native bees and other pollinating insects. Mason and carpenter bees are increasingly being used as more efficient pollinators, especially when crops are in need of cross pollination. Some companies have begun selling starter kits of mason bees that allow growers to maintain their own colony. Growers then need to maintain their population by providing suitable flowers, as a food source for these bees, otherwise these bees will migrate onward in search of food when these crops stop blooming.
Many orchards are monoculture crops where non-crops are considered weeds. Consequently, they are sprayed regularly to eliminate non-crop plants, which has the side effect of eliminating food sources for bees. While they may remain a viable for some smaller growers with flower sources for bees to use as food nearby, it is very much at the whim of mother nature and does not optimize pollination nearly as well as our processes. Research is currently being carried out to determine if providing other food source plants in the orchards can help bee population. To date, the results of this research have been mixed.
Dry Pollen
Some farmers have already tried innovative techniques to solve some of the problems occurring with the bee pollination methods. For example, some farmers buy pollen from pollen supply companies to place at the entrance of the bee hives to enhance pollination. However, there is little research on this method, and it is unclear if it actually increases yield. Furthermore, placing pollen at the front of the hives still relies on the actual bees and all of the risks associated with them.
Farmers have also tried blowing dry pollen onto the trees. There is no evidence that this actually increases yield unless one uses so much pollen that it becomes cost prohibitive. With limited evidence of success and high costs, this technology has not taken hold in the industry. Using Pollineering’s process, electrostatic sprayers, the pollen-infused slurry is 10 times more effective at attaching to the stigma of the flower than blowing dry pollen. This allows us to be much more effective in terms of both yield and pollen use.
Self-Pollination
Another current area of research is the development of self-pollinating trees. Currently these trees are still in testing or early production phases, so it is unclear how much of a competition they will be. Because trees must grow to maturity before their effectiveness can be measured, it will be a number of years before there is any conclusive evidence for this approach. While self-pollinating trees have made great strides in the past 10 years, in most cases they still have not matched the standard of regular trees.
The long lifespan of trees also limits the speed that this technology could be implemented, if it is ever developed. Farmers have heavy investments in their current orchards and are not likely to rip out producing trees until their trees grow too old to produce well. Tests of our technology on self-pollinating trees have shown a 15% increase in crop yield over untreated self-pollinating trees in the same orchard, certainly a modest increase.
China dwarfs all other markets both in production, need and consumption. With one-sixth of the world’s population lives in China, Chinese authorities are already concerned about the fate of bees and other pollinating insects. Asia is already the continent with the most hungry people with two-thirds of the world’s under-nourished. Internally, China is the largest consumer of food crops in the world. China has the fastest growing middle class in the world. China’s national consumption of fruits and vegetables is growing rapidly as their dietary demands are changing and increasing in proportion to their increasing prosperity.
In the last 50 years, the global human population has nearly doubled, while the average calories consumed per person has increased by about 30%. Predictions state that 70% more food will be needed by 2050. At the same time, farmable land is being lost at more than a million acres a year. Drought and unusual weather causes pollination gaps which traditional farming cannot solve, no matter how many bees are brought in. Suffice it to say, there are many challenges to global food security.
The Problem
Without pollination, plants don’t bear fruit. Insects are vital for the pollination of many kinds of plants. One-third of all the food we eat is insect pollinated which translates into a yearly food crop market of about US$270 billion worldwide. The USA market is US$19 billion.
Other non-food markets, such as cotton and alfalfa, can benefit from better pollination. Bees, the chief insect pollinator, have been dying off at record numbers around the world due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
In addition to the loss of crop yield due to CCD, prices for bee-based pollination have been on a sharp upswing. In the USA, the costs for pollinating crops, such as almonds, has increased by 400% since 2004. In response this last year, almond farmers moved 1.6 million bee hives into California almond orchards from around the USA and as far away as Australia.
CCD is a syndrome wherein all of the adult bees in a bee colony suddenly die leaving a live queen, larva, and immature bees behind. Without the adult bees, who are the workers, these survivors soon die, as well. While several theories exist, no one specific scientific cause for CCD has been proven.
[CCD] is far from the only risk to the health of honey bees and the economic stability of commercial beekeeping and pollination operations in the United States. Since the 1980s, honey bees and beekeepers have had to deal with a host of new pathogens from deformed wing virus to nosema fungi, new parasites such as Varroa mites, pests like small hive beetles, nutrition problems from lack of crop diversity or availability in pollen and nectar sources, and possible sub-lethal effects of pesticides. These problems, many of which honey bees might be able to survive if each were the only one, are often hitting in a wide variety of combinations, and weakening and killing honey bee colonies. CCD may even be a result of a combination of two or more of these factors and not necessarily the same factors in the same order in every instance.
CCD, drought, temperature differentiations from climate change, construction and plant disease are some of the risks farmers face globally. Because we depend on farmers for food, all other segments in the society suffer from these losses through increased food costs, poverty and hunger.
Pollineering is a agricultural company fundamentally transforming agriculture by giving farmers direct control over pollination, thus enabling greater yields while decreasing risk. Th is is done through an innovative mechanical pollination technology that addresses a large number of pollination concerns held by farmers.
Without pollination, plants cannot bear fruit. Bee colonies are vital for the pollination of many kinds of plants. A plant cannot produce more than its level of pollination, which is a major limiting factor. CCD has led to steady decline of bees at an alarming rate. Other factors, such as unusual weather or temperatures, can cause pollination gaps in cross pollinated crops, even when adequate pollinators are available. Pollineering provides the technology, products and services to optimize pollination (with or without bees) in spite of weather-caused pollination gaps. Additionally, it allows farmers to consolidate the harvest by pollinating all the plants at the same time during the blossom season.
Pollineering sources 100% natural (non-GMO) pollen for each variety of crop from outstanding suppliers which can ensure high quality and disease-free products. We use the highest quality control to insure pollen viability and purity. We then mix this pure pollen into our proprietary slurry.
Pollineering uses specially equipped electrostatic sprayer technology to spray the pollen slurry mixture on the crop. The electrostatic charge helps the pollen attach to the stigma of the flower, much like lint to a suit, to efficiently pollinate the flowers. Our licensed slurry also protects the pollen, allows a greater electrostatic charge to increase stigmatic receptivity and adhesion, and nourishes the pollen, enhancing pollen tube growth.
