This paper presents the findings of two studies one conducted on foraging behaviour of Himalayan honeybee (Apis cerana F.) on flowering buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) in November 2001 to 2002 and another on its impact on the grain quality and yield increment of this crop conducted during 2000-2002 under different pollination treatments at Kirtipur, Kathmandu valley. Apis cerana bees st...

Nearly forty years ago R. L. Berg proposed that plants with specialized pollination ecology evolve genetic and developmental systems that decouple floral morphology from phenotypic variation in vegetative traits. These species evolve separate floral and vegetative trait clusters, or as she termed them, "correlation pleiades." The predictions of this hypothesis have been generally supported, but...

Insect-pollinated crops provide important nutrients for human health. Pollination, water and nutrients available to crops can influence yield, but it is not known if the nutritional value of the crop is also influenced. Almonds are an important source of critical nutrients for human health such as unsaturated fat and vitamin E. We manipulated the pollination of almond trees and the resources av...

Different cultivars of rice (Oryza sativa) open at different times the day, and overlap anthesis time in between neighbouring is crucial importance to degree cross pollination rice. Nevertheless, none past experiments with ever reported respective flower opening (FOT) exposure duration (FED) parent cultivars, until recently. The authors present here first record FOT FED 1114 indica landraces So...

In order to produce doubled haploid lines of bread wheat resistant to strip or yellow rust, three F1 wheat hybrids were crossed using pollens of three maize hybrids. Out of 1071 pollinated florets, success in seed set ranged from 63.1% to 93.3% (mean 78%). Differences in seed set among the crosses were not significant. Embryo formation in the seeds developed on different crosses also varied fro...

The honey bee is a major insect used for pollination of many commercial crops worldwide. Although the use of honey bees for pollination can disrupt the habitat, the effects on their physiology have never been determined. Recently, honey bee colonies have often collapsed when introduced in greenhouses for pollination in Japan. Thus, suppressing colony collapses and maintaining the number of work...

Tropical biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions have become heavily eroded through habitat loss. Animal-mediated pollination is required in more than 94% of higher tropical plant species and 75% of the world's leading food crops, but it remains unclear if corridors avert deforestation-driven pollination breakdown in fragmented tropical landscapes. Here, we used manipulative resource ex...

One of the distinct reproductive programs in orchid species is pollination-triggered ovule development and megasporogenesis. During sexual reproduction, fertilization occurs days to months after pollination. The molecular mechanisms evolved to carry out this strategic reproductive program remain unclear. In the August issue of Plant Physiology 1 , we report comprehensive studies of comparative ...

Considerable infonnation has been developed on floral induction and the flowering process in Citrus in the papers which precede this one. Flower induction is a prerequisite to fruit production, so it is very important to have a clear understanding ofthe process. However, simply producing large numbers offlowers does not necessarily guarantee a subsequent large crop of fruit to harvest when they...