Category Archives: Food and biodiversity

A use for invasive Yellow-legged Hornets? – China Diary 4

The UK media has fueled something of a moral panic over the last couple of years, in relation to the Yellow-legged Hornet (Vespa velutina) which has become established as an invasive species in Europe. It also looks likely to become established in Britain and Ireland, where beekeepers have claimed that it poses “a severe threat to pollinators“. The only study that I know of that’s tested this idea in Britain – by Thomas O’Shea-Wheller, Juliet Osborne, et al. – suggests that the impact on bumblebees, at least, is not as great as feared.

In Asia, where the species originates, they’ve lived with this hornet for centuries and learned to exploit it. On a visit to a recent farmer’s market near Kunming we encountered a local man selling bottles of adult hornets steeped in alcohol, to be used as a liniment. It’s rubbed on arthritic joints and (apparently) soothes the pain.

The guy who was selling the bottles of embrocation had several hornet’s nests on display:

Later, on a trip to Lijiang I also spotted a hornet’s nest on a building, not the usual place you expect to see one:

The other use for hornets is as food – the larvae are apparently quite delicious and very nutritious. This is from a different market and is a different species:

Later on the Lijiang trip we visited a farm that was part of a Naxi (or Nakhi) community, one of the local ethnic minorities. They keep the indigenous honey bees (Apis cerana) in these small hives:

The honey bees pollinate an early-flowering local cherry variety that farmers grow in small orchards. The fruit is extremely small but also extraordinarily sweet:

These ones are past their best though still edible:

Much fresher cherries were being sold in farmer’s markets and at the roadside:

We’re still trying to work out what variety of cherry this is – possibly a landrace of the highly variable Chinese Cherry (Prunus pseudocerasus).

Of course, hornets can be pollinators too, though a study last year of the Yellow-legged Hornet in Spain showed that they negatively impact pollination of ivy in that region. These insects are definitely a cause for concern, though whether their impacts will be as great as some fear remains to be seen.

Seeds have power far beyond their size – China Diary 2

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In the image above, the three glass tubes on the right contain different cultivated varieties of soybean (Glycine max), one of the world’s most important (and controversial) legume crops. The tube on the left contains the seeds of what is considered the wild ancestor of soybean (Glycine soja). Archaeological evidence suggests that by about 5,000 years ago farmers in several areas of Asia had artificially selected varieties that had much bigger seeds than the wild type. I like this image because it’s a great demonstration of the power of humans to positively influence the food that we eat – and the power of those seeds to affect us via our diets and farming methods.

Of course it’s not just soybean that’s been subject to this sort of artificial selection – we’re encountering many other species and varieties of beans at the various farmer’s markets we’re visiting here in Yunnan:

Many of these beans require pollinators such as bees to initiate or at least enhance the crop, as we found in our recent study of soybean as part of the SURPASS2 project.

I took the main image last week when I had a tour of the Germplasm Bank at the Kunming Institute of Botany, a really impressive facility that stores both seeds in deep freeze and living plants in tissue culture. It’s one of the ways in which we can help to conserve the genetic diversity of wild and cultivated plants. Here are a few more photographs from that visit:

Dr Jie Cai, the manager of the seed bank, kindly hosted the tour and introduced the facility:

Seeds are stored at about -20C in huge, security-controlled freezers:

Collected seeds are first cleaned, sorted, and then counted – a laborious task that requires patience:

Samples of seeds are also germinated at various points to assess how well they are responding to storage:

Plants with seeds that do not respond well to being stored, such as many orchids and bamboos, are grown in tissue culture:

The building also hosts the genetic sequencing facility, another extremely impressive set of laboratories in which progress of sequencing the Chinese flora can be seen in real time:

First footsteps in Kunming – China Diary 1

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Just over a week ago I arrived in China to spend three months as a visiting professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I am being hosted by my colleague Dr Zong-Xin Ren, and I will repeat this trip each year over the next three years. This is my first visit to Kunming because my last visiting professorship here had to be conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As you can see above, KIB is adjacent to, and works closely with, Kunming Botanical Garden and I have the good fortune of being able to walk to work each day through the gardens:

As I’ve said before, I love botanic gardens because I always, always see plants that amaze and surprise me. For example, I struggled to recognise the family that this very large tree belonged to – and was surprised by the answer!

I’ll be spending my time working on some data and writing manuscripts, carrying out field work, and talking with KIB postgrads and postdocs about their projects. I’ll also give some lectures here and at other institutions in China. The first of these was last Thursday where I spoke about the role of plant-pollinator interactions in underpinning the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

Thanks to Brazilian researcher Sinzinando ‘Nando’ Albuquerque-Lima for those last two photographs. As part of a Brazilian-funded project, Nando is here for about 8 months studying a range of plants and their pollinators.

Further afield, Zong-Xin and Nando have introduced me to some of the amazing markets and restaurants in the city and I’ve already added three new plant families to my life list of those I’ve consumed: Phyllanthaceae (the rather sour fruit of a Phyllanthus species); Alismataceae (deep-fried, ‘crisped’ roots of a Sagittaria species); and Meliaceae (the young leaves of Toona sinensis are used as a spinach):

That last photo does not show rhubarb! They are the stems of a variety of taro (Colocasia esculenta) an Araceae species. Yunnan is especially famous for its wild-collected fungi:

On Sunday afternoon Zong-Xin’s research group gave some presentations about their research, which is diverse and exciting and I look forward to discussing it with them some more in the coming months. The afternoon started with a talk by Zong-Xin himself about the history and opportunities of studying pollinators and pollination in China:

And then we all went to dinner!

That’s all for now, I’ll add updates as the weeks go by.

More from the WorldFAIR Project: Agricultural biodiversity FAIR data assessment rubrics for plant-pollinator interactions

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The final deliverable from the WorldFAIR Project with which I’m involved has recently been published and can be freely downloaded from Zenodo by following the link below. The report is called “Agricultural biodiversity FAIR data assessment rubrics” and in it we present the results from a series of six pilot studies that adopted the FAIR* standards and our recommendations from the previous report.

This document complements the previous one by giving examples and setting out guidelines that allow researchers and practitioners to ensure FAIRness in their plant-pollinator interaction data.

Here’s the full reference:

Drucker, D. P., Salim, J. A., Poelen, J., Soares, F. M., Gonzalez-Vaquero, R. A., Devoto, M., Ollerton, J., Kasina, M., Carvalheiro, L. G., Bergamo, P. J., Alves, D. A., Varassin, I., Tinoco, F. C., Rünzel, M., Robinson, D., Cardona-Duque, J., Idárraga, M., Agudelo-Zapata, M. C., Marentes Herrera, E., Taliga, C., Parr, C.S., Cox-Foster, D., Hill, E., Maués, M.M. Agostini, K. Rech, A.R., Saraiva, A. (2024). WorldFAIR (D10.3) Agricultural biodiversity FAIR data assessment rubrics (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10719265

Although this is the last formal deliverable from our WorldFAIR work package, it’s not the final output that we have planned. I’ll report back on the journal paper(s) that we are writing as and when they are published.

*Findable, Accessible, Interoperable & Reusable (or sometimes Reproducible)

Can coffee plantation design boost both productivity and sustainability? A new study says YES!

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One of the most productive research collaborations in which I’ve had the pleasure to be involved has been with André Rodrigo Rech in Brazil. It started when he was a postgrad working on his PhD, and has now continued as André has developed into fully-fledged academic with his own research group. That productivity has been fueled by a lot of coffee, of course, as you’ll know if you’ve read my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society!

Our most recent paper concerns coffee production in Brazil and how the design and management of plantations can both support wild bee populations AND increase the quality and quantity of the crop. One of the lead authors Gudryan Baronio has written a post about the work over on The Applied Ecologist blog – here’s the link: https://appliedecologistsblog.com/2024/02/26/can-coffee-plantation-design-boost-both-productivity-and-sustainability/

Here’s the reference – if you want a PDF of the paper, please send me a message via my Contact page:

Pereira Machado, A.C., Baronio, G., Soares Novaes, C., Ollerton, J., Wolowski, M., Natalina Silva Lopes, D. & Rech, A. (2024) Optimizing coffee production: Increased floral visitation and bean quality at plantation edges with wild pollinators and natural vegetation. Journal of Applied Ecology (in press)

Here’s the abstract:

Animal pollination is important for more than 75% of agricultural crops, including coffee, whose productivity can increase with adequate pollination. Bees, including many solitary species, are diverse pollinators, with around 85% of them considered more effective than honeybees in pollen transfer. We assessed the coffee plantation and its surrounding vegetation for solitary bee nesting throughout the coffee flowering season and measured their impact on coffee productivity.
We installed collection stations with trap nests inside a coffee plantation, on the border and inside the native vegetation in a farm in Diamantina, MG, Brazil. We used 10 weekly monitored replicates at least 1 km apart. We evaluated fruiting by autogamy in relation to natural pollination and used the increase in fruit set from pollinators to calculate the farmer’s monetary gain. We recorded bee visits to the exposed flowers during coffee flowering considering both on the edge and inside the coffee plantation. Ripe fruits were dried, counted and weighed.
We discovered 132 solitary bee nests outside the plantation, with 54% containing coffee pollen grains, indicating coffee as an essential resource for bees even outside the crop area. More bee visits occurred at the coffee plantation’s edge, resulting in increased fruit production, denser fruits, and rounder fruits in that area. Bagged flowers produced consistent seeds in all locations. The farmer could earn an extra US$1736.37 per hectare if the entire area received the same level of pollination contribution from bees as observed at the coffee border.
Synthesis and applications. Our study emphasises the key role of pollinators in coffee production and their impact on fruit and seed characteristics. Bee visits were more frequent on border areas, emphasising their reliance on natural nesting sites. Bee-mediated pollination positively affected fruit traits and self-pollinated fruits in plantation borders had reduced mass. Solitary bee nesting was primarily observed in native vegetation, underlining its importance for bee populations. Pollen composition in nests varied with proximity to coffee plantations, indicating landscape vegetation influences pollinator foraging. These findings support optimising coffee plantation design by preserving native vegetation to increase coffee yields and conserve biodiversity.

Image © Ana Carolina Pereira Machado

Just published – WorldFAIR Agricultural Biodiversity Standards, Best Practices and Guidelines Recommendations for plant-pollinator interactions

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One of the projects in which I’m currently involved is the WorldFAIR project. Funded by the European Commission, WorldFAIR is exploring how to make data FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable – across a range of different disciplines in the sciences and humanities.

My involvement is specifically with Work Package 10, which is focused on data standards for plant-pollinator interactions, particularly as they relate to pollination of agricultural crops.

I’m delighted to say that the second deliverable from that work – a set of standards, best practices and guidelines recommendations – is now available for free download if you follow the link in this reference:

Drucker, D., Salim, J. A., Poelen, J., Soares, F. M., Gonzalez-Vaquero, R. A., Ollerton, J., Devoto, M., Rünzel, M., Robinson, D., Kasina, M., Taliga, C., Parr, C., Cox-Foster, D., Hill, E., Maues, M. M., Saraiva, A. M., Agostini, K., Carvalheiro, L. G., Bergamo, P., … Trekels, M. (2024) WorldFAIR (D10.2) Agricultural Biodiversity Standards, Best Practices and Guidelines Recommendations (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10666593

Here’s the first paragraph of the summary:

The WorldFAIR Case Study on Agricultural Biodiversity (WP10) addresses the challenges of advancing interoperability and mobilising plant-pollinator interactions data for reuse. Previous efforts, reported in Deliverable 10.1 – from our discovery phase – provided an overview of projects, best practices, tools, and examples for creating, managing and sharing data related to plant-pollinator interactions, along with a work plan for conducting pilot studies. The current report presents the results from the pilot phase of the Case Study, which involved six pilot studies adopting standards and recommendations from the discovery phase. The pilots enabled the handling of concrete examples and the generation of reusable materials tailored to this domain, as well as providing better estimates for the overall costs of adoption for future projects.

Key tropical crops at risk from pollinator loss due to climate change and land use – a new study just published

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PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) is one of the most important sources of data for large-scale modelling of how changes in land use is impacting biodiversity. Marry that with future climate models and you have a powerful tool for understanding how these two major factors in global change will shape both biodiversity and human society over the coming decades.

In recent years it’s been a privilege to be part of a project led by Joe Millard and Tim Newbold that’s using PREDICTS to model how pollinators and pollination services are likely to be impacted by human activities. The first paper from that work (which was Joe’s PhD) was entitled ‘Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity’ and came out in 2021, as I documented on my blog at the time.

Yesterday a second paper was published, this time focused on how land use and anthropogenic climate change interact to potentially affect insect-pollinated crops across the world.

Our main finding is that it’s tropical crops, especially cocoa, mango, watermelon, and coffee, that in the future will suffer the greatest negative impacts from loss of pollinators. Although we can have perfectly healthy diets without consuming any of those, they currently support tens of millions of farmers across the tropics and are part of global supply chains worth billions of dollars per year.

Here’s the full reference with a link to the paper, which is open access:

Millard, J., Outhwaite, C.L., Ceaușu, S., Luísa G. Carvalheiro, da Silva e Silva, F.D., Dicks, L.V., Ollerton, J. & Newbold, T. (2023) Key tropical crops at risk from pollinator loss due to climate change and land use. Science Advances 9, eadh0756

Here’s the abstract:

Insect pollinator biodiversity is changing rapidly, with potential consequences for the provision of crop pollination. However, the role of land use–climate interactions in pollinator biodiversity changes, as well as consequent economic effects via changes in crop pollination, remains poorly understood. We present a global assessment of the interactive effects of climate change and land use on pollinator abundance and richness and predictions of the risk to crop pollination from the inferred changes. Using a dataset containing 2673 sites and 3080 insect pollinator species, we show that the interactive combination of agriculture and climate change is associated with large reductions in insect pollinators. As a result, it is expected that the tropics will experience the greatest risk to crop production from pollinator losses. Localized risk is highest and predicted to increase most rapidly, in regions of sub-Saharan Africa, northern South America, and Southeast Asia. Via pollinator loss alone, climate change and agricultural land use could be a risk to human well-being.

‘…people would need to be very weak in the head… before it would occur to them to go into the garden and eat snails…’

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‘…people would need to be very weak in the head… before it would occur to them to go into the garden and eat snails…’
Anon. (1867)

Delighted to announce that my essay “A short history of snail-eating in Britain” will be in October’s issue of British Wildlife magazine. This is a topic that’s intrigued me for many years because it has a close connection to the snail-eating habits of folks (my own family included) in the area of the north-east of England where I grew up. Hopefully it will also interest, and surprise, the readers of British Wildlife!

Making plant-pollinator interaction data FAIR – a new draft report just published

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One of the projects in which I’m currently involved is the WorldFAIR project. Funded by the European Commission, WorldFAIR is exploring how to make data FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable – across a range of different disciplines in the sciences and humanities.

My involvement is specifically with Work Package 10, which is focused on data standards for plant-pollinator interactions, particularly as they relate to pollination of agricultural crops. After a year of hard work, I’m delighted to announce that our interim draft report from this Work Package has just been published! You can read the summary and download the report from Zenodo – here’s the link: https://zenodo.org/record/8176978

In addition there’s an associated webinar taking place on August 22nd – more details here: https://worldfair-project.eu/event/rescheduled-worldfair-rdas-10-year-anniversary-the-worldfair-case-study-on-plant-pollinator-interactions-wp10/

There’s more to come over the next twelve months and I’ll post updates as and when they appear. In the meantime, do check out the WorldFAIR website for information about the other Work Packages, their webinar series, FAIR data standards, and so forth.

Get more out of your fruit and veg: eat the parts we often throw away!

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There’s a frequently cited statistic that one third of the food produced for human consumption is wasted every year. That waste occurs for a variety of reasons, including spoilage, over-production and inefficient processing methods. This has clear environmental (and therefore human) consequences, for example in terms of increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas production; excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides; unsustainable water extraction; and conversion of natural habitats to farmland.

Much of the wastage occurs before the food ever reaches shops and markets, so individual consumers have little control over the waste, other than to try to pressure business and political leadership into action. However, we can all do our bit when it comes to reducing food waste in our home, which has positive impacts on our health and our bank balance.

When it comes to fruit and vegetables, we in the west often throw away perfectly edible parts, I suspect because it doesn’t fit with our expectations of what the food “should” look like. A good example is radishes (Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus) where it’s not uncommon to discard the perfectly edible leaves. People who grow them often pull out plants that have flowered, despite the fact that the seed pods are delicious and arguably nicer than the roots, as I discussed in this blog post from a few years ago.

There’s lots of other examples like this, one of my favourites being the crunchy central pith that you find in the thick stems of broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica). I love it raw and it has a flavour quite distinct from the normal part that we consume.

It was only quite recently that Karin introduced me to the fact that the mature pods of peas (Pisum sativum) are also edible, if you know how to process them correctly. If you eat the pod as it is, the texture is tough and stringy and not very pleasant. But if you carefully peel away and discard the thin inner membrane of the pod, the remaining flesh is sweet and delicious. It’s fiddly and takes a bit of practice. The easiest way is to gently snap one corner of the half-pod and peel from there – see the example third from the top in the accompanying photograph. Below that in the photo is the thin membrane, which can be put into your food waste or composted, and below that the edible portion of the pod.

Karin and I just eat this raw, but no doubt you could add the pod flesh to any number of dishes. If you have children or grandkids, set them the task of removing the membrane in one piece – it’s not easy!

Please leave a comment below and let me know your favourite bits of edible fruit and veg that are normally discarded.