Abstract
Pollination is essential for food production in the world, but in pollinator-dependent crops it relies on the attraction of pollinators to flowers. However, crop varieties vary in their attractiveness to flower visitors and volatile compounds emitted by flowers may play a significant role in attracting or repelling pollinators. Here, we investigated the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in both male and hermaphrodite flowers of five commercial types of melon Cucumis melo (Cantaloupe, Charentais, Galia, Piel de sapo and Yellow), and their role in attracting or repelling Apis mellifera foragers. We found significant variation in the identity and proportion of these chemical compounds produced by both melon types and flower genders and observed significant positive and negative correlations between the amount of D-Limonene and Benzaldehyde (bee attractants) and α-Pinene (bee repellent), respectively, to the number of bee visits to flowers particularly in the Cantaloupe type and hermaphrodite flowers, the most visited ones. Our results suggest that differences in the composition of melon floral VOCs and the proportion of the different compounds play significant role in the number of visits by A. mellifera with possible implications to pollination and fruit yield. It also implies to the perspective of breeding varieties more attractive to pollinators through the selection of flower lines richer in bee-attractant and/or poorer in bee-repellent volatiles.
Highlights
Pollination is an essential ecosystem service to crop production worldwide, contributing to the yield of most crops (Klein et al, 2007; Ricketts et al, 2008; IPBES, 2016) and food security for providing essential micronutrients to human health (Lautenbach et al, 2012; Chaplin-Kramer et al, 2014)
We examined the results obtained by Fernandes (2017) in respect to the VOC profile of the melon flowers aiming to (i) identify, quantify and qualify the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by melon flowers; (ii) determine possible differences in the profile of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced according to the flower gender and agronomic types of melon; (iii) investigate possible relationships between the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by the melon flowers and the observed number of floral visits of the most used pollinator of this crop, the bee Apis mellifera
The greatest number of volatile compounds found in the male flowers of the five melon types belong to the terpene group, especially in the male flowers of the types Yellow, Charentais and Piel de sapo, which presented 100% of VOCs belonging to this chemical group
Summary
Pollination is an essential ecosystem service to crop production worldwide, contributing to the yield (quantity and/or quality) of most crops (Klein et al, 2007; Ricketts et al, 2008; IPBES, 2016) and food security for providing essential micronutrients to human health (Lautenbach et al, 2012; Chaplin-Kramer et al, 2014). Pollinator-dependent plants have evolved a variety of ways to sign rewards to floral visitors, attracting their pollinators (Varassin & Amaral-Neto, 2014; Farré-Armengol, 2015) Floral traits such as size, shape, color, petal texture, movement and even electric fields have been studied and acknowledged to play roles in the recognition and attraction of pollinators to flowers (Dafni & Kevan, 1997; Whitney et al, 2009, 2013; Alcorn; Whitney & Glover, 2012; Clarke et al, 2013; Myczko et al, 2015).
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