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Advances in Pollen Management and Assisted Pollination Techniques in Crop...
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Advances in Pollen Management and Assisted Pollination Techniques in Crop Plants

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Physiology and Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2025 | Viewed by 692

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Julián Cuevas González

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Guest Editor
Department of Agronomy, University of Almería, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Agroalimentario (ceiA3), 04120 Almería, Spain
Interests: mediterranean and subtropical fruit crops; pollination, pollen–pistil interaction, fruit set and thinning; fruit crop physiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Irene Salinas Romero

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor Assistant
Department of Agronomy, University of Almería, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Agroalimentario (ceiA3), 04120 Almería, Spain
Interests: tropical fruit crops; protected cultivation; reproductive biology; pollination; fruit development

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Extensive changes in soil use, scary biological invasions, and ongoing climate change, among other threats, are causing a serious decline in wild pollinators worldwide. Pests, pesticide use, and pollution also threaten honeybees and bumblebees, the most frequently domesticated pollinators used on numerous agricultural crops plants. This decline makes it necessary to look for alternative pollinators better adapted to the flower biology and morphology, or even rely on artificial hand pollination, to guarantee adequate pollen transport and thus optimal fruit and vegetable production. However, assisted hand pollination usually requires a great amount of labor, making it expensive and only feasible for high-priced products. Steps of assisted artificial pollination usually require pollen harvesting, medium- and long-term pollen storage, and pollen delivery using different devices. The continuous and remarkable advances in pollen management and assisted pollination techniques deserve better dissemination through a dedicated Special Issue. For this reason, we call researchers worldwide to submit their investigations on these topics, which include alternative pollinators, insect behavior, plant–pollinator interactions, pollination deficits and solutions, effects of pollination on yield and fruit quality, natural and artificial pollination strategies, and finally harvesting, storage, and pollen application methods in human-assisted pollination.

Prof. Dr. Julián Cuevas González
Guest Editor

Dr. Irene Salinas Romero
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • pollination habits
  • pollinators decline
  • wild pollinators
  • bee pollination
  • plant–insect interaction
  • artificial pollination
  • pollen harvesting
  • medium- and long-term pollen storage
  • innovative pollen application methods

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 3741 KiB  
Article
Declining Outcrossing Rates Inside Orchard Blocks of ‘Maluma’ and ‘Shepard’ Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) Trees: Effects on Fruit Yield and Quality
by Matthias A. Reese, Rachele S. Wilson, Joel Nichols and Stephen J. Trueman
Plants 2025, 14(8), 1218; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14081218 - 15 Apr 2025
Viewed by 434
Abstract
Many rapidly expanding food crops, including avocado (Persea americana Mill.), are dependent on animal pollination but there is a growing shortfall in global pollinator supply. Avocado flowers are insect-pollinated and yields of the main cultivar, ‘Hass’, are often pollen-limited, especially in the [...] Read more.
Many rapidly expanding food crops, including avocado (Persea americana Mill.), are dependent on animal pollination but there is a growing shortfall in global pollinator supply. Avocado flowers are insect-pollinated and yields of the main cultivar, ‘Hass’, are often pollen-limited, especially in the middle of single-cultivar orchard blocks, where there is limited deposition of cross-pollen from another cultivar. We analysed two avocado cultivars of alternate flowering types, ‘Maluma’ (Type A) and ‘Shepard’ (Type B), using SNP-based DNA markers to identify the pollen parent of fruit at different distances from the other cultivar. We aimed to determine whether the numbers of cross-fertilised fruit and tree yields decline at increasing distances from a cross-pollen source, and whether cross-fertilised fruit are larger than self-fertilised fruit. We found that the number of cross-fertilised fruit produced by each tree declined in the middle of the blocks of each cultivar. Trees in the middle of the ‘Maluma’ block compensated for low levels of cross-pollination by producing more self-fertilised fruit, and their yields did not appear to be pollen-limited. However, yields in the middle of the ‘Shepard’ block declined by 25% as a direct result of a 43% reduction in the number of cross-fertilised fruit produced by each tree. ‘Shepard’ trees did not compensate for poor cross-pollination by producing more self-fertilised fruit. Cross-fertilisation of ‘Maluma’ by ‘Shepard’ increased fruit mass by 8% and cross-fertilisation of ‘Shepard’ by ‘Hass’ increased fruit mass by 5%, compared with self-fertilisation. Our results confirm that yields of avocado trees are sometimes, but not always, pollen-limited. Low levels of both self-pollination and cross-pollination resulted in pollen limitation of yield in the middle of the ‘Shepard’ block, but high levels of self-pollination were sufficient to generate high yields in the middle of the ‘Maluma’ block. Closer interplanting of Type A and Type B avocado cultivars increases the opportunities for cross-pollination, which can often increase tree yield and fruit size, and improve the financial returns for growers. Improving the pollination efficiency of foraging insects by providing them with the optimal pollen genotypes is increasingly important as we experience a growing demand for managed pollinators and a declining abundance of wild pollinators. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Pollen Management and Assisted Pollination Techniques in Crop Plants)
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