Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum): Agro Ecological Benefits and Pollinator Support
摘要
Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) playing an important component in promoting agro ecological stability and pollinator communities, which play a crucial role in ensuring food availability in the world. But with growing habitat degeneration, exposure to pesticides, climatic pressure and agricultural intensification, the populations of pollinators have reduced drastically. In this chapter, the authors discuss the ecological and economic significance of pollinators highlighting the necessity to adopt sustainable policies ensuring pollination services that are essential to crop productivity. It brings together the existing body of scientific knowledge, surveys successful methods of conservation, and shows the quantitative items of the latest empirical researches and case studies. The strategies that have been emphasized are the restoration of habitats, improvement of floral resources, combined methods of managing pests, diversified farming systems and community-based programs of monitoring. The existing quantitative measures demonstrate that the creation of pollinator friendly habitats is able to boost the frequency of pollination to a 30–60% range and enhance yields of crops that rely on pollinators by 20–45%. Case studies also show that diversified landscapes retain at least 50% of pollinator richness, and lowers (25–40%) exposure of pesticides in diversified landscapes reduces colony mortality. The buckwheat, oilseed and fruit production systems demonstrate that the lack of pollination can decrease yields by 15–35%. Altogether, the results highlight the need to consider ecological principles in agricultural planning, as well as to increase the awareness of farmers and use nature-based approaches to guarantee the resilience of pollinators in the long term and sustainability in crop production.