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Entomovectoring for Precision Biocontrol and Enhanced Pollination of Crops pp 1–17Cite as

Agroecosystem Design Supports the Activity of Pollinator Networks

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Abstract

The ecological compensation areas are hedges, woods, field margins, uncultivated land and the wild nectariferous/polliniferous plants that form the vegetable “non-productive” component within the agro-ecosystems. In intensive agriculture, these components have been described for many years as unhelpful in the productive systems. More recently a different approach, which considers the complex interactions between the crop and the non-productive areas has opened new perspectives. Many studies carried out at the farm-scale and at the landscape-scale resulted in the identification of many non-crop plants that play an important role in the conservation of both pollinators and beneficial arthropods. Knowledge about their role in the multiplication, life cycle and population dynamics of pollinators is crucial in order to select weeds, trees and shrubs for restoring degraded agroecosystems and for the development of wild pollinators conservation programs, or for the selective enhancement of certain pollinator species. Synchronizing pollinators’ presence with the need of pollination of a specific crop requires the management of ecological compensation areas. A crucial role to realize synchronization is represented by non-crop plants, which may allow the nesting and multiplication of the most efficient pollinators of the target crop at the proper period.

Bettina Maccagnani - Scientific advisor for the Automobili Lamborghini project “Environmental Biomonitoring with Honey Bees: Science and Education”

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support by the EU via Core-Organic II (Bicopoll, Targeted precision biocontrol and pollination enhancement in organic cropping systems), the work of Eve Veromann was supported by institutional research funding IUT36-2 of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. Support for Otto Boecking came from the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BOEL, FKZ 03OE126).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Agricoltura Ambiente “Giorgio Nicoli”, Crevalcore, Bologna, Italy

    Bettina Maccagnani, Roberto Ferrari & Luca Boriani

  2. Department Plant Protection, Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Eve Veromann

  3. Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, Institute for Apiculture, Celle, Germany

    Otto Boecking

Authors
  1. Bettina Maccagnani
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  2. Eve Veromann
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  3. Roberto Ferrari
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  4. Luca Boriani
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  5. Otto Boecking
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roberto Ferrari .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Guy Smagghe

  2. Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, Institute for Apiculture, Celle, Germany

    Otto Boecking

  3. Centro Agricoltura Ambiente “Giorgio Nicoli”, Crevalcore, Bologna, Italy

    Bettina Maccagnani

  4. Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Marika Mänd

  5. School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Peter G. Kevan

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Maccagnani, B., Veromann, E., Ferrari, R., Boriani, L., Boecking, O. (2020). Agroecosystem Design Supports the Activity of Pollinator Networks. In: Smagghe, G., Boecking, O., Maccagnani, B., Mänd, M., Kevan, P. (eds) Entomovectoring for Precision Biocontrol and Enhanced Pollination of Crops. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18917-4_1

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