Pollinator Partnership Research

The mission of the Pollinator Partnership is to promote the health of pollinators, critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education, and research. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Natural Resources Conservation Service has awarded the Pollinator Partnership, OSU, and Grand Valley State University a grant to study the benefits of floral strips on vegetable farms. Since pollinator populations have drastically decreased, there is a need for growers to incorporate suitable habitat into agricultural systems for our pollinating partners.

Jon Branstrator is one of the twelve growers throughout Ohio who is providing space and agricultural experience to this project. Branstrator Farm has welcomed Ben Phillips, a graduate student from the Agricultural Landscape Ecology Lab of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center onto the farm to conduct his research. He is investigating the effects of integrating floral strips on the populations of beneficial insects in the pumpkin crop setting. The cucumber beetle and squash bug are the main predators of pumpkin plants.
Phillips is testing whether planting strips of sweet alyssum and other perennials near the pumpkin crop will increase populations of insects that prey and parasitize the cucumber beetle and squash bug. “Vegetative diversity supports a wider variety of insects, including parasitic wasps that feed on the nectar of small flowers and parasitize other insects, including cucumber beetle and squash bug”, Ben Phillips describes. Following up with “Think of the dinner scene from Alien.“ The purpose of the study is to determine whether pumpkin patches that incorporate floral strips have increased beneficial insect populations compared to that of pumpkin patches without floral strips.

Like most crops this growing season, the sweet alyssum was challenged with the cold wet weather this spring. However, nice strips of alyssum flowers have been successfully produced. For more information, please visit the following links:

http://pollinator.org/

http://www.pollinator.org/PDFs/NRCSCIGHighlights071909.pdf

http://www.pollinator.org/colbert2011.htm