Wild bee pollination in Grewia flavescens Juss.
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Wild bee pollination in Grewia flavescens Juss. Veereshkumar 1,2 A. K. Handa 1
&
K. M. Kumaranag 3 & A. R. Uthappa 1 & Dibyendu Deb 4 & Madhulika Srivastava 1 & K. B. Sridhar. 1 &
Received: 12 May 2020 / Accepted: 28 September 2020 # African Association of Insect Scientists 2020
Abstract Grewia flavescens Juss. is an underutilised fruit species found throughout semi-arid and sub-humid parts of the world including India. For the first time, an attempt was made to study the role of different flower visitors on fruit set of G. flavescens. We have recorded different floral visitors, activity patterns, foraging behavior and their role in fruit set. A total of 25 species of floral visitors were recorded, of which Megachilidae (48.35%) was the most abundant group followed by Apidae (27.21%), Halictidae (10.29%) and others (14.15%). Among floral visitors, the foraging rate and foraging speed of Megachile and Xylocopa were studied. They were also effective in depositing more pollen on the stigmatic surface per visit than other flower visitors. Fruit-set was higher (71.42%) in open pollinated flowers than in artificial-cross pollinated (68.33%). Whereas, artificially-selfed and pollinator excluded flowers resulted in the lowest fruit-set (22.22% and 8.95%, respectively). G. flavescens is a self-compatible species but favouring cross pollination and also exhibited delayed self pollination to ensure reproductive success in the absence of an effective pollinator. Keywords Non-Apis . Fruit set . Foraging behavior . Megachilids . Pollinators
Introduction The Grewia genus is appreciated for its edible fruits (Mohammed and Yagi 2010). Nearly 40 species of this genus are found in India (Kirtikar and Basu 1975). Grewia species are distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical areas of Africa, Asia and Australia (Whitehouse et al. 2001). The fruits are made into a fermented drink in Southern Africa (FAO/ WHO 1988). The use of these fruits in beverages, yogurt, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-020-00294-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Veereshkumar [email protected] 1
ICAR- Central Agroforestry Research Institute, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India
2
Present address: ICAR- National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
3
Division of Entomology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India
4
ICAR- Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India
ice cream and baby food has commercial potential (Gebauer et al. 2007). Rural people in Niger collect the fruits and sell at the local market as a source of livelihood (Gebauer et al. 2013). Many of the wild species of the genus Grewia are underutilized and are the part of a food bowl for the tribal community (Kumar et al. 2017). One such species is Grewia flavescens Juss, commonly called as donkey berry, belongs to the family Tiliaceae. An emphasis is being made on
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