Exploring relationships between pollinators and canola on the Palouse

View the project report

Commodities

• Agronomic: canola

Practices

• Crop Production: pollination, pollinator habitat, pollinator health, varieties and cultivars
• Education and Training: demonstration, extension, mentoring, on-farm/ranch research, workshop
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, habitat enhancement

Canola is an increasingly common crop grown on the Palouse due to its potential for producing
biofuels and to diversity conventional cereal-legume rotations. Our preliminary data suggest that
canola crops, which provide a large source of pollen and nectar in an otherwise simple floral
landscape, support a diverse population of honeybees and native species including bumblebees,
mason bees, and sweat bees. However, while many canola fields are surrounded exclusively by
agriculture, others are near sizeable tracts of prairie and other insect-friendly habitat.
Importantly, canola yields appear to increase at sites surrounded by more natural habitat,
possibly due to increased bee abundance in these landscapes. Our preliminary data suggest two
main hypotheses that warrant further investigation. First, increasing natural habitat surrounding
canola fields promotes increased bee abundance and seed yields. Second, increasing nectar sugar
content is attractive to bees and promotes high canola yields. Our project addresses these
knowledge gaps, allowing+ our team to gain a better understanding of the role of pollinators in
promoting high yielding and high quality canola plants. We will also determine how growers
might be able to modify their management practices to promote high pollinator activity on their
fields. This will improve the sustainability of canola producers in the Palouse. Our project thus
meets several goals of the Western SARE program: (1) promote good stewardship of the nation’s
natural resources (by providing information on how growers can modify farming practices to
promote pollinator diversity and high yielding/quality canola); (2) promote crop, livestock, and
enterprise diversification (our project will aid growers in incorporating canola into rotations,
which will increase their enterprise diversity; our project also explores diversity of pollinators);
and (3) examine the environmental implications of adopting sustainable agriculture practices and
systems (by exploring how farming practices affect pollinators and the quality of canola plants).

(1) Explore relationships between landscape structure, bees, and canola yields and quality
(2) Determine how farm management practices affect nectar and pollen traits
(3) Educate growers on pollinator management in canola