June 30, 2017 — A growing number of specialty crop growers are using alternative managed bees, including the cavity-nesting blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria), to supplement or replace managed honey bee pollination of their crops. Researchers on the Integrated Crop…
For release March 13, 2017 — Many specialty crop growers are looking to incorporate pollinator habitat plantings on their farms to support bees, crop pollination, and yields. A new video series produced by the Integrated Crop Pollination Project will guide…
Michigan State University AgBioResearch recently profiled Dr. Nikki Rothwell, coordinator of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Center, Project ICP researcher working on cherry pollination, and award-winning cidermaker. Dr. Rothwell has been at the MSU research center since 2004, and works closely with…
The Integrated Crop Pollination Project held a Pollination Forum for the general public at Michigan State University on November 28th. Speakers included keynote speaker Marla Spivak (University of Minnesota), as well as Project ICP research and outreach partners Theresa Pitts-Singer…
Project ICP researcher Kelly Garbach (Point Blue Conservation Science, formerly Loyola University-Chicago), in collaboration with Geoffrey Morgan (Carnegie Mellon University), has developed two publicly-available, open-source programs for anonymizing and cleaning up data from large surveys. As part of the Integrated Crop…
Highbush blueberries grown in different regions of North America are pollinated by markedly different communities of bees, with economically important pollination deficits in blueberries grown outside of the natural range of its wild relatives, according to a new study published today in PLOS ONE. The team of Project ICP…
How can we help bees and ensure that farmers continue to get consistent, reliable pollination? A new video produced by the Integrated Crop Pollination Project explores one solution that’s gaining support around the world: adding wildflowers to field edges. Planting flowers, especially…
The Integrated Crop Pollination Project has released the summary report from its 2015 survey of Florida blueberry growers’ pollination practices. Earlier this month, the project team published the summary from a parallel survey of Michigan blueberry growers. The survey of 69 blueberry growers in five Florida…
The Integrated Crop Pollination Project has released a summary report from its 2015 survey of Michigan blueberry growers’ pollination practices. The survey of 240 blueberry growers delved into growers’ goals for pollination management, networks of information sources about pollination, and past, current, and potential…
More than 150 food crops in the US and Canada need insect pollination to produce quality, marketable yields; it’s estimated that one out of every three bites of food we eat comes from an insect-pollinated crop. Supporting pollinators and the…