Mutually beneficial pollinator diversity and crop yield outcomes in small and large farms

LUCAS A. GARIBALDI; BARBARA GEMMILL-HERREN; HIEN T. NGO; JENS ASTRÖM; DAMAYANTI BUCHORI; KEDAR DEVKOTA; MARIA C. GAGLIANONE; MUO KASINA; PETER KWAPONG; VIVIANE PIRES; ANTONIO M. SARAIVA; SIDIA WITTER; LUÍSA G. CARVALHEIRO; JULIANA HIPÓLITO; NADINE AZZU; JIANDONG AN; FERMÍN J. CHAMORRO GARCÍA; MÁRCIA DE FÁTIMA RIBEIRO; MARIA GOSS; ALÍPIO J.S. PACHECO FILHO; GUIOMAR NATES PARRA; RANBEER S. RAWAL; RUAN VELDTMAN; HONG ZHANG; BERNARD E. VAISSIÈRE; BRENO M. FREITAS; AGUSTÍN SÁEZ; BETINA BLOCHTEIN; FABIANA OLIVEIRA DA SILVA; LEANDRO FREITAS; MOHAMMAD IRSHAD; LUCIA H. PIEDADE KIILL; CARMEN PIRES; AKHMAD RIZALI; BLANDINA F. VIANA

SCIENCE

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

Año: 2016 vol. 351 p. 388 - 391

0036-8075

Ecological intensification, or the improvement of crop yield through enhancement of biodiversity, may be a sustainable pathway toward greater food supplies. Such sustainable increases may be especially important for the 2 billion people reliant on small farms, many of which are undernourished, yet we know little about the efficacy of this approach. Using a coordinated protocol across regions and crops, we quantify to what degree enhancing pollinator density and richness can improve yields on 344 fields from 33 pollinator-dependent crop systems in small and large farms from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For fields less than 2 hectares, we found that yield gaps could be closed by a median of 24% through higher flower-visitor density. For larger fields, such benefits only occurred at high flower-visitor richness. Worldwide, our study demonstrates that ecological intensification can create synchronous biodiversity and yield outcomes.