Polinização por abelhas em cultivo convencional e agroflorestal

Abstract

Environmental services are important to the maintenance of ecosystems and species preservation. Pollination arises as one of them because it has influence in the preservation of vegetables and animals. It is a positive factor in agriculture as it sustains the existence of crops. Pollination by animals is extremally important. Bees stand out as natural habits and crop pollinators. Therefore, the maintenance and preservation of this species is of economic and ecological interest. Understanding the influence of this pollinators in the agricultural environment is greatly important to reinforce the need of conservation. Conventional agricultural ecosystems are different from agroforestry systems, they have different possibilities of coexistence with native fauna. Agroforestry systems are an ecological alternative to the conventional ones. This work aimed to verify the contribution of bees as pollinators in conventional tomato crop and in eggplant crop in an agroforestry system. In tomato cultivation, an increment of pollinators was performed with the introduction of nests of stingless bee Melipona quadrifasciata. The objective was to analyze the consequence of this increment in the quality of fruits produced. The effect of bee diversity on tomato fruit production and quality was evaluated before and after the introduction of M. quadrifasciata nests in the crop area. In eggplant cultivation the research had as objective: verify the contribution of bees as eggplant pollinators in an agroforestry environment. Through the verification of the contribution of bees to the formation of fruits, observation of the behavior of the bees when visiting the flowers and evaluation of the pollination contribution in the quality of the formed fruits. In tomato crop, there was an increase in the number of seeds produced after the introduction of M. quadrifasciata nests. Despite the contribution, the nests were removed from the area of cultivation since they began to define as consequence heavy metals contamination. In eggplant cultivation, fruit production by self-pollination was very low. Bees like Paratrigona lineata and Halictidae showed to be efficient pollinators of culture with only one visit to the flowers. The fruits formed in treatments where bees were allowed produced heavier, larger and with greater number of seeds fruits. Analyzing the results, it is possible to conclude that bees are relevant in the two forms of cultivation. Also, that agroforestry constitutes an environment with less impact to the population of pollinators.