Rufus Isaacs, MSU entomologist, is investigating how to improve bees' pollination efforts.Photo courtesy of Greg Kohuth“Specialty crops are valued at more than $50 billion every year, and pollination is critical to ensure successful fruit set and profitability of the industry,” said Sonny Ramaswamy, NIFA director. “With the recent declines in pollinator numbers, especially honey bees, this grant is extremely important for the sustainability of the specialty crop industry in the United States, which produces the fruits, vegetables and nuts recommended by USDA for a healthy diet.”

The research and outreach efforts being supported by this grant will provide growers with information on pollination, pollinators and management practices that will keep their crops productive year after year, he added.

The grant was funded through the Specialty Crop Research Initiative, part of the 2014 Farm Bill that was signed at MSU.

Rufus Isaacs, MSU AgBioResearch entomology researcher and extension specialist, will lead the project with the goal of developing and delivering context-specific integrated crop pollination recommendations on how to effectively harness the potential of native bees for crop pollination.

“This next stage of funding is essential for continuing the work of the team of more than 50 people across the nation who are dedicated to the goals of our project,” Isaacs said. “We have established and measured bees and crop yields in more than 100 fields at farms from California to Pennsylvania, some pollinated with honey bees, some with wildflower habitat added for pollinators and some augmented with other types of managed bees.”

The team will continue to monitor the fields and compare the performance, economics and social aspects of these tactics while developing educational and decision-support information for specialty crop pollination, he added.

These ICP strategies are designed to improve long-term sustainability of U.S. specialty crops and help ensure the continued ability of growers to reap profitable returns from their investments in land, plants and other production inputs.

Isaacs and the team will:

• Identify economically valuable pollinators and the factors affecting their abundance.
• Develop habitat management practices to improve crop pollination.
• Determine performance of alternative managed bees as specialty crop pollinators.
• Demonstrate and deliver ICP practices to specialty crops growers.
• Determine optimal methods for ICP information delivery and measure ICP adoption.
• Analyze economics and modeling of pollination ecosystem services.

MSU first received a SCRI grant for $1.7 million to begin this work in fiscal year 2012, the final year of the 2008 Farm Bill.

MSU’s team includes scientists from Loyola University, Franklin and Marshall College, Penn State University, University of Florida, University of Vermont, The Xerces Society, the University of California-Davis and UC-Berkeley, the USDA Agricultural Research Service and a private company, Pacific Pollination. The project also includes a large number of collaborating farmers providing in-kind support such as their land for conducting the research, and a diverse advisory board of stakeholders.