Enhancing crop shelf life with pollination

Abstract

Background: Globally, high amounts of food are wasted due to insufficient quality and decay. Although pollinationhas been shown to increase crop quality, a possible impact on shelf life has not been quantitatively studied.Results: We tested how shelf life, represented by fruit decay, firmness and weight, changes as a function of pollinationlimitation in two European, commercially important strawberry varieties. Pollination limitation resulted in lower amountsof deformed fruits. Whereas 65% of wind-pollinated fruits were deformed, open pollination resulted in only 20% deformedfruits. During storage, the proportion of decayed fruits increased in relation to the degree of deformation. In the varietyYamaska, 80% of the fruits with high degrees of deformation decayed after four days, whereas in the variety Sonata, allhighly deformed fruits had already decayed after three days. Fruit weight decreased independent from thedegree of deformation. However, strongest deformations resulted in a generally lower fruit weight in Sonata,whereas in Yamaska, also medium deformed fruits had a lower weight than highly deformed fruits. Effects ofdeformation on firmness declines were mostly variety dependent. Whereas firmness declined similarly for alldegrees of deformation for Yamaska, highly deformed fruits lost firmness fastest in Sonata.Conclusions: Our results suggest that crop pollination has the potential to reduce food loss and waste inpollinated crops and thus to contribute to global food security. However, this relationship between pollinationand food waste has so far been almost completely ignored. Future pollination research should therefore focusnot only on yield effects but also on crop quality. A more comprehensive understanding of how pollinationcan benefit global food security should lead to a more efficient crop production to help meeting future fooddemands.