Success in spring depends on skilfully managing beehives during the rest of the year. By Anna Mouton. It’s easy to forget about bees outside the brief period when self-incompatible fruit trees are flowering. But the delivery of hives is preceded…
How to think about cross-pollination when planning orchards. By Anna Mouton. Effective cross-pollination is crucial for maximising productivity of self-incompatible deciduous-fruit orchards over their lifetime. This article shares insights on cross-pollinator selection and management from horticultural adviser and plant breeder…
Everything growers need to know about the Western Cape Bee Industry Association standards for pollination beehives. By Anna Mouton. Effective pollination requires beehives to meet specific criteria. The Western Cape Bee Industry Association has developed a standard for pollination hives…
The details matter for optimising yields and quality in pome and stone fruit. By Anna Mouton. Pollination is essential for fruit set in most pome and stone fruit. The transfer of pollen to the stigma is the first step toward…
Cross-pollination by honeybees is a prerequisite for setting many pome- and stone-fruit cultivars. How can growers take control of this process? By Anna Mouton. There’s no recipe for perfect pollination — growers need to fine-tune their practices according to the…
How plum and pome-fruit growers can optimise pollinator performance in netted orchards. By Anna Mouton. “The pollination of plums is super-important,” says stone-fruit grower and technical adviser Petru du Plessis. “If you have correct pollination in September, you can look…
A new Hortgro study starts buzzing in Western Cape pome- and stone-fruit orchards. By Nanike Esterhuizen. The South African fruit industry faces a challenge: a heavy reliance on honeybees for pollination. With much of the R17 billion deciduous-fruit industry dependent…
The latest results from a three-year Hortgro-funded investigation of effective pollination period in Japanese plums. By Anna Mouton. Export cartons per hectare drive the profitability of Japanese plum orchards. The first step in filling those cartons is to have a…
The Western Cape has a superb indigenous pollinator — we must look after it. By Anna Mouton. If insects disappeared, humanity could probably survive on cereals and other non-pollinated crops, but we would lose about a third of global food…
The next generation of artificial pollination systems is designed to support crop-load optimisation. By Anna Mouton. Prof. Matthew Whiting is an applied whole-tree physiologist in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University. He spoke to Fresh Quarterly about artificial…