Pollinator diversity and landscape heterogeneity stabilizes coffee yield over time

BOSCOLO, DANILO; FREITAS MOREIRA, E; HIPÓLITO, J.; ANGEL-COCA LC; GARIBALDI, LUCAS A.; FELIPE VIANA, BLANDINA

Congreso; 2023 IALE World Congress; 2023

The pollination service provided by biodiversity is a fundamental ecological process for at least35% of cultivated crops. However, these processes may be jeopardized by extensiveagricultural expansion. In this context, we investigated the contribution of pollinating insects tothe fruiting rate of coffee plantations (Coffea arabica L.) over time and how this relationship isassociated with landscape heterogeneity. Pollination experiments in ten coffee plantations inBrazil were carried out annually between 2013 and 2016, comparing open pollination andspontaneous self-pollination. The fruiting rates of these treatments show that pollinationcontributes to the stability of coffee production over the years. While the flowers exposed topollinators had an 8% variation in their fruiting rate, flowers without pollinators showed avariation of 31%. Without pollination, the yearly production variability of the studied coffee cropswould be about 4 times higher. In addition, the fruiting rate is much higher in the open treatment(64%) than in the closed treatment (36%). About 28% of the average fruiting rate can beattributed to pollinators. Considering that the fruiting rate of the open treatment is proportional tothe total fruit production of the coffee plantations, the pollination service corresponds to 44% ofthe coffee fruit production on average. Our results show that landscape heterogeneity was thebest predictor for the pollination service. In this sense, high landscape heterogeneity is crucialfor pollination and fundamental for farmers to have safe and stable coffee production.Landscape planning should thus be an essential part of crop management.