Next Time You Eat a Kiwifruit, Don’t Thank a Bee
奥本大学昆虫学家 Anthony Abbate 博士《经济昆虫学杂志》2023年3月刊登
Honey bees and bumble bees excel at pollinating wide varieties of plants and crops, but kiwifruit is not one of them. A study investigating kiwifruit pollination methods found fruit developed on barely 3 percent of bee-pollinated flowers, leaving artificial pollination (by human hand) as the primary choice for kiwifruit growers.
By Andrew Porterfield
蜜蜂和大黄蜂擅长为各种植物和农作物授粉，但猕猴桃不是其中之一。一项研究猕猴桃授粉方法的研究发现，只有 3% 的蜜蜂授粉花朵结出果实，因此人工授粉（人工授粉）成为猕猴桃种植者的首选。
▲Bees pollinate kiwifruit
The kiwifruit, a native of China that is now cultivated worldwide, depends on efficient pollination to reach a marketable size. In fact, fruit size has a straight-line relationship to grains of pollen. Until now, however, no studies have looked at what type of pollination—insect, wind, or artificial—does the job best.
猕猴桃原产于中国，目前在世界各地都有种植，其果实需要有效的授粉才能长到可销售的大小。事实上，果实大小与花粉粒呈直线关系。然而，到目前为止，还没有研究调查哪种授粉方式（昆虫、风或人工）效果最好。
▲Bee pollination
Anthony Abbate, Ph.D., research entomologist at Auburn University, and colleagues at Auburn and at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, have found that managed honey bees (Apis mellifera) and bumble bees (Bombus impatiens) are rather woefully inadequate in providing enough pollen to maintain commercial kiwifruit size. Their study, believed to be the first of its kind, was published in March in the Journal of Economic Entomology.
奥本大学昆虫学家 Anthony Abbate 博士及其同事和美国农业部农业研究服务中心的同事发现，人工饲养的蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）和大黄蜂（Bombus impatiens）无法提供足够的花粉来维持商业猕猴桃的大小。他们的研究被认为是同类研究中的首例，于 3 月发表在《经济昆虫学杂志》上。
▲Bee pollination
“The biggest surprise? We thought insects would do a decent job at pollination. We didn’t see that,” Abbate says. The scientists studied three types of pollination—artificial (hand spread), bees, and wind—and compared the resulting fruit development. (They also tested a fourth group of plants in which flowers were covered to prevent pollen from spreading at all, as a control group.) They found that artificial pollination resulted in fruit developing on more than 97 percent of flowers. Insect pollination was a distant second place, with just about 3 percent of flowers developing fruit.
“最大的惊喜是什么？我们原以为昆虫授粉会做得不错。但我们没有看到，”阿贝特说。科学家研究了三种授粉方式——人工授粉、蜜蜂授粉和风授粉，并比较了由此产生的果实发育情况。（他们还测试了第四组植物，其中花朵被覆盖以防止花粉传播，作为对照组。）他们发现人工授粉导致超过 97% 的花朵结出果实。昆虫授粉排在第二位，只有大约 3% 的花朵结出果实。
▲黄心猕猴桃花粉
A man in a yellow t-shirt, a dark blue hat, and sunglasses stands below the horizontal branches of a kiwifruit plant in an orchard. He holds a hand puffer device: a long pole with one end held upward close to a plant flower, where a small white canister is attached to the pole. At the other end of the pole, held downward, the man holds a small black bladder attached a tube that runs through the pole.
果园里，一名身穿黄色 T 恤、头戴深蓝色帽子、戴着太阳镜的男子站在猕猴桃树的水平枝条下。他手持一个手持吸气装置：一根长杆，一端向上靠近植物花朵，杆上连接着一个白色小罐。杆的另一端向下，男子手持一个黑色小气囊，气囊上连接着一根穿过杆的管子。
▲Kiwi pollination▲
While a study investigating kiwifruit pollination methods found fruit developed on barely 3 percent of bee-pollinated flowers, artificial pollination using a hand-puffer device—as demonstrated here by Auburn University entomologist Anthony Abbate, Ph.D.—resulted in fruit developing on 97 percent of flowers.
一项研究猕猴桃授粉方法的研究发现，蜜蜂授粉的花朵中只有 3% 能够结出果实，而使用手动吹气装置进行人工授粉（正如奥本大学昆虫学家 Anthony Abbate 博士在此展示的那样）可使 97% 的花朵结出果实。
▲Electric kiwi pollen pollination equipment that has been widely used in recent years
This of course, creates an expensive problem for kiwifruit farmers. “If you’re a commercial grower, you want large fruits that will sell,” Abbate says. “They’re throwing a lot of money to pollinate a crop multiple ways. Farmers stock honey bees and bumble bees but also use artificial pollination. This starts to cost thousands of dollars per acre. You have to pay to apply the pollen, too.”
这当然给猕猴桃种植户带来了昂贵的问题。“如果你是商业种植者，你希望收获大颗的果实以便出售，”阿巴特说。“他们投入大量资金，通过多种方式为作物授粉。农民饲养蜜蜂和大黄蜂，但也使用人工授粉。每英亩的成本高达数千美元。你还必须支付使用花粉的费用。”
▲Kiwi pollination▲
To study the pollination methods, the researchers experimented in a 180-acre kiwifruit orchard in central Alabama, from April to October. Since kiwifruit plants are either male or female (males pollinate the females to produce the fruit), each row in the orchard alternated between one female golden flesh kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis) and one of three male cultivars. Four bumble bee quads (16 colonies in total) and 12 honey bee colonies were placed in the orchard a day before the start of the kiwifruit’s bloom. The researchers then captured the bees and quantified the pollen being carried. They also carried out the pollen exclusion study, looking for the relative contribution of each pollination method.
为了研究授粉方法，研究人员在阿拉巴马州中部一个占地 180 英亩的猕猴桃园进行了实验，时间从 4 月到 10 月。由于猕猴桃植株要么是雄性要么是雌性（雄性给雌性授粉以产生果实），果园中的每一行交替种植一株雌性金果猕猴桃（Actinidia chinensis）和三种雄性品种之一。在猕猴桃开花前一天，果园中放置了四群大黄蜂（共 16 个蜂群）和 12 个蜜蜂蜂群。然后，研究人员捕捉了蜜蜂并量化了携带的花粉。他们还进行了花粉排除研究，寻找每种授粉方法的相对贡献。
▲猕猴桃雄花采摘运输
Artificial pollination resulted in 97.4 percent of fruit set per flower, compared to 3.1 percent for insects, 0.4 percent for wind, and 0.4 percent for pollen exclusion.
人工授粉使每朵花的果实结实率达到 97.4%，而昆虫授粉的结实率仅为 3.1%，风授粉的结实率仅为 0.4%，花粉排除的结实率仅为 0.4%。
▲Kiwi male flower
Clearly, artificial pollination is by far the superior method for growing commercially viable kiwifruit. The problem with bees is not actually with the bees themselves, however. Abbate says the inadequacy of insect pollination on kiwifruit is probably an unusual situation, created by active breeding of trees with larger fruit.
显然，人工授粉是迄今为止种植具有商业价值的猕猴桃的最佳方法。然而，蜜蜂的问题实际上并不在于蜜蜂本身。阿巴特说，猕猴桃昆虫授粉不足可能是一种不寻常的情况，这是由于主动培育果实较大的树造成的。
▲Picking kiwifruit flowers
Native kiwifruit is much smaller than its commercial cultivar. For native plants, insect pollination is more than sufficient for reproduction and successful (albeit small) fruit production. That advantage disappeared once fruits were increased in size through breeding.
本土猕猴桃比其商业栽培品种小得多。对于本土植物来说，昆虫授粉足以繁殖并成功（尽管果实很小）生产。一旦通过育种增加果实尺寸，这种优势就消失了。
▲Collect kiwi blossoms
Wide view of a row of kiwifruit plants in an orchard. In the foreground is a thick wooden post, with additional posts spaced out along the length of the row stretching in to the distance. Between each post is two or three kiwifruit plants, extending up from the ground and connected to cords stretched between the wooden posts to aid the plants' stability when fruit grows.
果园中一排猕猴桃植株的广角图。前景是一根粗木柱，沿着行长延伸到远处的其他木柱间隔开来。每根木柱之间有两三棵猕猴桃植株，从地面向上延伸并连接到木柱之间伸展的绳索，以帮助植株在果实生长时保持稳定性。
▲猕猴桃花粉冷藏保存运输Kiwi pollen refrigerated storage and transportation
Why don’t bees succeed in pollinating commercially grown kiwifruit? Native kiwifruit is much smaller than its commercial cultivar. For native plants, insect pollination is more than sufficient for reproduction and successful (albeit small) fruit production. That advantage disappears for commercial cultivars.
为什么蜜蜂无法成功为商业种植的猕猴桃授粉？本土猕猴桃比其商业栽培品种小得多。对于本土植物，昆虫授粉足以繁殖并成功（尽管果实较小）生产。对于商业栽培品种，这种优势消失了。
▲采摘猕猴桃雄花
Another problem is that bees get distracted. The kiwifruit bloom season is relatively short, about one to two weeks, and occurs in the spring in Alabama. “A lot of other flowers bloom at the same time. Also, kiwi flowers don’t produce a nectar source,” Abbate says. In fact, the study showed that honey bees carried pollen from nine other plant species besides kiwifruit (and kiwifruit constituted just 21 percent of pollen carried). Bumble bees carried more pollen but also had pollen from nine other plant species.
另一个问题是蜜蜂会分心。猕猴桃花期相对较短，大约一到两周，发生在阿拉巴马州的春季。“许多其他花朵同时盛开。此外，猕猴桃花不会产生花蜜来源，”阿巴特说。事实上，研究表明，蜜蜂携带的花粉除了猕猴桃外，还有来自其他九种植物的花粉（猕猴桃只占携带花粉的 21%）。大黄蜂携带的花粉更多，但也有来自其他九种植物的花粉。
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Together, both issues make it nearly impossible for bees to carry the approximate 4,000 pollen grains needed to produce each large kiwifruit. “The plants will have fruits,” Abbate says, “but not the optimal commercial fruit.”
这两个问题加在一起，使得蜜蜂几乎不可能携带生产每个大猕猴桃所需的大约 4,000 个花粉粒。“这些植物会结出果实，”阿巴特说，“但不是最佳的商业果实。”
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原文连接：https://entomologytoday.org/2023/05/10/kiwifruit-pollination-bees-artificial/
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