Abstract
Brassica napus provide valuable oil with low erucic acid content but it has low productivity. To improve this, managed honey bee pollination assumes importance. An experiment was conducted at the University Seed Farm, Ladhowal on B. napus with three treatments viz. open pollination, intensive bee pollination by placing 4 bee-frame Apis mellifera colony inside nylon netting cage (6x3x2 m) and pollinators’ exclusion by caging the plots with nylon net. Results revealed that the maximum number of silique/ plant (1120.66± 54.14), seeds/ siliqua (24.46± 0.21), thousand seeds weight (4.29± 0.11g) and seed yield (15.21± 0.27 q/ ha) were obtained with open pollinated plots, resulting in 310.65, 52.59, 46.42 and 87.78% increase over pollinators’ exclusion (self-pollination), respectively. The respective increase due to A. mellifera alone was 83.79, 35.50, 21.84 and 43.46%. Thus, A. mellifera is a promising honey bee for augmenting pollination of B. napus in achieving higher seed yield.
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