Research team granted $840,000 to replicate ‘buzz pollination’

buzz pollination, bumble bees
Mario Vallejo-Marin © This photo shows a prototype of a robo-buzzer capable of shaking the stamens of a buzz-pollinated plant and inducing pollen release. The prototype is attached to a toothpick (2mm diameter) using copper wire "legs" for illustration.

With farmers using electric toothbrushes to pollinate tomatoes, scientists are using micro-robotic tech to figure out how ‘buzz pollination’ can be replicated

At the University of Massachusetts Lowell, US, a team has been granted $840,000 over a period of three years. They will investigate how to simulate the buzz of a bee in a microrobot, so that plants can be pollinated in places that don’t have the right kind of bee.
Air pollution is believed to be one source of the dwindling demographic.

Dr Robbie Girling, Associate Professor in Agroecology at the University of Reading and not involved in the micro-robotic tech project, said: “We knew from our previous lab studies that diesel exhaust can have negative effects on insect pollinators, but the impacts we found in the field were much more dramatic than we had expected.”

With this grant from the Human Frontier Science Program, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Noah Jafferis and associate professor of biological and environmental sciences, Mario Vallejo-Marin at the University of Sterling will try to replicate ‘buzz pollination’.

What is ‘buzz pollination’ and why does it matter?

Buzz pollination is the high-frequency audio process bees use to shake pollen from plants and flowers onto their bodies, so they can drop it into other plants and flowers to fertilise them.
According to scientists, twenty-thousand varieties of plants, including tomatoes, potatoes, and blueberries, really depend on buzz pollination to produce their crops.
If humans can understand how bees create buzz pollination, then they can improve how  agriculture works. Since bee populations are dwindling, despite the best efforts of activists and scientists, this means that food security could be at risk if no alternative method is found.
“This is an exciting opportunity to bring together fundamental biological research and micro-robotic technology to delve into the inner workings of buzz pollination in a way that hasn’t been feasible before,” Jafferis said.

“These physical experiments, together with computer simulations, will allow us to build a deeper understanding of which aspects of buzz pollination are most important for pollen release.”

Farmers are using electric toothbrushes to encourage pollination

Right now, farmers are resorting to their own experiments – using electric toothbrushes to encourage buzz pollination, so their crops can continue to create produce.

“In Australia and Southern Africa, for example, they need buzz pollinating bees for pollinating some fruit crops. But bumblebees are not native there, so farmers have resorted to using electric toothbrushes to pollinate tomatoes,” Vallejo-Marin said.

In the past, scientists have recommended the use of a tuning fork to achieve the same high-frequency audio process – shaking the pollen loose.

A separate study found that both electric toothbrushes and tuning forks were equally good at releasing pollen from the plants involved. Crucially, toothbrushes are notoriously less expensive.

Scientists working with the new grant emphasise that they do not want to replace bees with robotic alternatives.

Vallejo-Marin further said: “Understanding buzz pollination better could lead to stronger motivation for conserving the diversity of bees, beyond honeybees and bumblebees, as well as potentially optimizing fruit and vegetable yields in agriculture.”

Editor's Recommended Articles

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here