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Enhancing crop shelf life with pollination

B. Klatt,Felix Klaus,C. Westphal,T. Tscharntke

Published 2014 in Agriculture & Food Security

ABSTRACT

BackgroundGlobally, high amounts of food are wasted due to insufficient quality and decay. Although pollination has been shown to increase crop quality, a possible impact on shelf life has not been quantitatively studied.ResultsWe tested how shelf life, represented by fruit decay, firmness and weight, changes as a function of pollination limitation in two European, commercially important strawberry varieties. Pollination limitation resulted in lower amounts of deformed fruits. Whereas 65% of wind-pollinated fruits were deformed, open pollination resulted in only 20% deformed fruits. During storage, the proportion of decayed fruits increased in relation to the degree of deformation. In the variety Yamaska, 80% of the fruits with high degrees of deformation decayed after four days, whereas in the variety Sonata, all highly deformed fruits had already decayed after three days. Fruit weight decreased independent from the degree of deformation. However, strongest deformations resulted in a generally lower fruit weight in Sonata, whereas in Yamaska, also medium deformed fruits had a lower weight than highly deformed fruits. Effects of deformation on firmness declines were mostly variety dependent. Whereas firmness declined similarly for all degrees of deformation for Yamaska, highly deformed fruits lost firmness fastest in Sonata.ConclusionsOur results suggest that crop pollination has the potential to reduce food loss and waste in pollinated crops and thus to contribute to global food security. However, this relationship between pollination and food waste has so far been almost completely ignored. Future pollination research should therefore focus not only on yield effects but also on crop quality. A more comprehensive understanding of how pollination can benefit global food security should lead to a more efficient crop production to help meeting future food demands.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2014

  • Venue

    Agriculture & Food Security

  • Publication date

    2014-10-02

  • Fields of study

    Agricultural and Food Sciences, Biology

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1186/2048-7010-3-14
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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