STUDY OF POLLINATING PERFORMANCE OF NATIVE POLLINATORS ON MUSTARD CROP (Brassica juncea L.)
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Date
2020-11-07
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Banda University of Agriculture & Technology, Banda-210001, Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract
Indian mustard is a predominant crop and covers more than 90% area of mustard. After soybean and palm oil, it is third important oilseed in the world. Since last three decades, this crop became one of the most important sources of superior vegetable oil in the world. Rapeseed-mustard is highly cross-pollinated crop, owing to that pollination management, augmentation and conservation of pollinators would increase the crop productivity manifold. Pollination is an intricate relationship between plants and pollinators. Pollination is one of the most essential ecosystem services, which is effectual for crop productivity. Agricultural scientists are interested to maximize crop productivity by the effectiveness of pollination methods. Present investigation envisaged to compare the performance of pollinators. Experiments were conducted at Experimental farm of Banda University of Agricultural & Technology, Banda. Various observations were recorded viz. diversity of the pollinators, foraging initiation and foraging cessation, Relative abundance, visitation rate, time spent, number of siliqua/ plant, number of seed/ siliqua, seed test weight and seed productivity.
Total 22 anthophiles belong to 6 orders were observed collecting nectar or pollen or both on mustard. Out of the anthophiles honey bees, Apis mellifera, Apis cerana, Apis dorsata and Apis florea are key pollinators. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index of anthophiles/ pollinators obtained were H’= 2.159 on mustard. Longest foraging duration and pollination service in a day recorded with A. dorsata. The visitation rates varied with species-to-species and week-to-week. The time spent on a flower at par with species-tospecies. The relative abundance of pollinators varied from species to species, day to day and time to time. The maximum number of siliqua per plant, number of seed/ siliqua and seed productivity of mustard was recorded with the open pollination. It advocates that augmentation and conservation of these key pollinators can maximize the pollination and thereby, enhance the productivity.
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SRI CHANDRA 2020.STUDY OF POLLINATING PERFORMANCE OF NATIVE POLLINATORS ON MUSTARD CROP (Brassica juncea L.). M.Sc. Thesis. 53p.