Abstract

POVEDA CORONEL, Carlos Alberto; RIANO JIMENEZ, Diego; AGUILAR BENAVIDES, Lucia  and  CURE, Jose Ricardo. Efficiency of Pollination by Orphan Colonies of Bombus atratus (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) in Greenhouse. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2018, vol.23, n.1, pp.73-79. ISSN 0120-548X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/abc.v23n1.61648.

In Colombia the strawberry has become a crop of economic interest due to the growing demand in the foreign market in the last decade. Most plantations are open fields and do not use pollination strategies to improve the production quality. Pollination with bumblebees improves the quality of the fruits, although these are produced by spontaneous pollination. The native species Bombus atratus has been recognized as an efficient pollinator of Colombian horticultural crops under greenhouse. The present study evaluated the pollination efficiency of two orphan colonies in the quality of the fruits of the "Camino real" and "Ventana" cultivars planted under a greenhouse in Cajicá-Colombia. The buttons were excluded to obtain the fruits produced spontaneously and to be compared with the fruits coming from the visit of workers of B. atratus. It was found that the visit of the workers improved fruit quality in the features: caliber (35 % and 31 %), length (28 % and 19 %), fresh weight (103 % and 90 %), dry weight 126 % and 145 %) and number of seeds (55 % and 81 %) for the cultivar "Camino Real" and "Ventana" respectively. From the observations made, it was determined that the floral resource used by the workers of B. atratus was the nectar and recommendations are done about on its use in this crop.

Keywords : ecosystem services; horticultural crops; native bees; pollinators; protected agriculture.

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