Contribution of pollinators to delivering fruit quality in commercial sweet cherry orchards

Abstract

Background: Pollinators provide an essential ecosystem service to many crops, includingsweet cherry (Prunus avium), which can be quantified in terms of fruit number and/orquality. Most studies in sweet cherry have explored the extent to which fruit set relieson pollinators but have neglected pollinators’ contribution to fruit quality. We investi-gated the impact of pollinators on fruit set (2018–2019) and fruit quality (2017–2019).In 10 commercial sweet cherry orchards under polytunnels, we conducted insect-exclusion experiments comparing insect-excluded blossoms (mesh-bagged blossoms) toblossoms exposed to floral visitors (open blossoms). We then investigated relationshipsbetween fruit set and fruit quality.Results: Pollinators were key to underpinning commercial fruit set (15.4% fruit set fromopen blossoms compared to 1.1% with bagged blossoms), equivalent to a contribution of92.8%. Pollinators were also essential to achieving higher cherry fruit quality. With openblossoms, fresh mass, width, dry matter, and flesh/pit ratio of cherries increased by19.8%, 7.9%, 19.8%, and 10.5%, respectively, compared to cherries from bagged blos-soms. In contrast, firmness was similar between both pollination treatments. We did notfind a significant relationship between fruit set and quality, suggesting trees did not carryan excessive fruit burden.Conclusion: Our results highlight the importance of pollinators, not only for underpin-ning commercial yields in terms of fruit set, but also for higher fruit quality. We recom-mend growers adopt effective pollinator management practices to help underpincommercially viable yields consisting of fruit with a higher marketable potential