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

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

SCIENCE

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

Año: 2016 vol. 651 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.