Jeff Layman wrote:
On 26/04/15 16:31, Brooklyn1 wrote:
Jeff Layman wrote:
Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
It's not really OT, since the dire predicament of the pollinators
that give us our "daily bread" is of concern to home gardeners as
well as to consumers of commercially-produced food, organic or
otherwise.

The "pollinator" which gives us our "daily bread" is the wind. No
bees or other insects are involved. All cereal crops AFAIK are wind
pollinated, so our staple foods are not affected by the bee
population.

What you know is incorrect.

I am afraid you have it wrong.
http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0512sp1.htm
"While not all flowering plants depend on animals for pollination -
cereals, for example, are wind-pollinated - most of the world's
orchard, horticultural and forage crops can only produce seeds and
fruit if animals move pollen from the flower's male anthers to the
female stigma of the same or another flower. "

http://www.plantbiotechnology.org.in/issue4.html
"The pollination behavior of the cereal and millet crop plants shows
that most of them are highly self-pollinated or wind pollinated. Biotic
vectors do not visit these species. In some other crop
species biotic vectors that visit the flowers only take what they
want such as nectar and/or pollen, and not necessarily pollinate.
However, biotic vectors are important pollinators of a considerable
number of species of fruit and vegetable crops and several wild
species."
http://pollinators.biodiversityirela...f-pollinators/
"In terms of weight, 35% of the world food production come from crops
which depend on insect pollination, 60% come from crops which do not
(such as cereals) and 5% come from crops on which the impact of insect
pollination is still unknown."

Many other similar hits if you Google "pollination" and "cereals".

All plants are pollenated by wind to some
extent but wind alone doesn't do a very good job. Grain/forage crops
still rely *primarilly* on insect pollenation... you obviously don't
live in farming country for if you ever walked about wheat/corn/hay
fields you'd see more insect polinators at work than you can count,
and their noise is deafening.

I live less than 5 minutes from "farming country" (a lot less than
that if you consider the smells which are pretty common this time of
year...). I often walk through fields of wheat and barley and almost
never see bees in them. If there are any pollinators they will be
found on or around flowering weeds in a sea of cereals. They never
visit the cereal flowers as they get nothing from them.

Relying on wind alone most of the pollen would be blown away

Nonsense. It does get everywhere - particularly up the noses of
hayfever sufferers, but there is more than enough to go round to
pollinate cereal crops.

Once again Sheldon hasn't done his homework but relies instead on his
observation skills which are poor and his bluster which is huge. Naughty
boy Shelly, sit in the corner.

For those who want to know what plants require insect pollination this will
tell you much, with cites to research if you want to follow up details of
particular plants.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles...onHandbook.pdf

A relevant quote:

"Worldwide, more than 3,000 plant species have been used as food, only 300
of which are now widely
grown, and only 12 of which furnish nearly 90 percent of the world's food.
These 12 include the grains:
rice, wheat, maize (corn), sorghums, millets, rye, and barley, and potatoes,
sweet potatoes, cassavas or
maniocs, bananas, and coconuts (Thurston 1969).1 The grains are
wind-pollinated or self-pollinated,
coconuts are partially wind-pollinated and partially insect pollinated, and
the others are propagated
asexually or develop parthenocarpically. However, more than two-thirds of
the world's population is in
Southeast Asia where the staple diet is rice. Superficially, it appears that
insect-pollination has little effect
on the world's food supply - possibly no more than 1 percent."

The last sentence sums it up.

--
David

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