Abstract
Mutualistic biotic interactions as among flowering plants and their animal pollinators are a key component of biodiversity. Pollination, especially by insects, is a key element in ecosystem functioning, and hence constitutes an ecosystem service of global importance. Not only sexual reproduction of plants is ensured, but also yields are stabilized and genetic variability of crops is maintained, counteracting inbreeding depression and facilitating system resilience. While experiencing rapid environmental change, there is an increased demand for food and income security, especially in sub-Saharan communities, which are highly dependent on small scale agriculture. By combining exclusion experiments, pollinator surveys and field manipulations, this study for the first time quantifies the contribution of bee pollinators to smallholders’ production of the major cash crops, cotton and sesame, in Burkina Faso. Pollination by honeybees and wild bees significantly increased yield quantity and quality on average up to 62%, while exclusion of pollinators caused an average yield gap of 37% in cotton and 59% in sesame. Self-pollination revealed inbreeding depression effects on fruit set and low germination rates in the F1-generation. Our results highlight potential negative consequences of any pollinator decline, provoking risks to agriculture and compromising crop yields in sub-Saharan West Africa.
Highlights
Insect pollination of flowering plants is a process of significant importance in terrestrial environments, and it provides vital ecosystem services for human well-being[1,2] such as crop production
Following FAO, the insect pollination economic value (IPEV) for West Africa is estimated as 5.6 Billion US Dollars, which is the highest on the African continent along with one of the highest vulnerability rates in terms of pollination (i.e., IPEV/total production economic value)[11,37]
The cotton variety used in this study has a high ability to set fruit without pollinators via spontaneous selfing (61%), whereas this ability was lower in sesame (20%)
Summary
Insect pollination of flowering plants is a process of significant importance in terrestrial environments, and it provides vital ecosystem services for human well-being[1,2] such as crop production. Some systematic assessments of pollinator species and their relative pollination service contribution to the yield quantity and quality of these two important cash crops have been carried out[26,27], but estimations of the relative economic benefits of bee pollination have rarely been made. The majority of studies are based on large-scale farms, while smallholding crop systems with fields smaller than 2 ha have received less attention in ecosystem-service research[35,36]. Following FAO, the insect pollination economic value (IPEV) for West Africa is estimated as 5.6 Billion US Dollars, which is the highest on the African continent along with one of the highest vulnerability rates in terms of pollination (i.e., IPEV/total production economic value)[11,37]
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