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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 24 Aug 2015 01:04:41 +0000
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From the USDA publication, considered the standard reference work



> 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. 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.



McGregor, Samuel Emmett. Insect pollination of cultivated crop plants. Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, 1976.



Interestingly, this statement also appears almost verbatim in:



Richards, K. W., & Kevan, P. G. (2002). Aspects of bee biodiversity, crop pollination, and conservation in Canada. Pollinating Bees—The Conservation Link Between Agriculture and Nature, 77-94.



Abrol, D. P. (2012). Value of Bee Pollination. In Pollination Biology (pp. 185-222). Springer Netherlands.



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