Smart orchard design improves crop pollination

1. More sustainable and environmentally-friendly agricultural practices, including ecological intensification, are needed to reduce biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.
2. We evaluated the potential of ecological intensification through the enhancement of pollination services in an intensively managed and insect-pollinated crop, Macadamia integrifolia. We compared the effects and importance of agronomic practices that include agronomic input (i.e. irrigation and managed honeybees), orchard design requiring no external inputs (i.e. spatial orchard structure) and landscape factors in ten South African macadamia orchards.
3. In comparison to experimental pollinator exclusion, insect pollination increased the initial and final nut set by 304% and 23%, respectively. However, nut set was pollination limited as hand pollination further improved nut set.
4. Flower visitation rates increased with the cover of semi-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape (1km radius). This effec..., Please see the README document (\"README_Data-set_SmartOrchardDesignImprovesCropPollination.txt\") and the accompanying published article: Anders, M., Grass, I., Linden, V. M. G., Taylor, P. J., & Westphal, C. (2023). Smart orchard design improves crop pollination. Journal of Applied Ecology, 60, 624–637. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14363, The data tables are stored as text files (.csv) and can be opened by any text editor, Excel, Numbers or LibreOffice.
The scripts for the data analysis are written for R and can be opened also by any text editor or R., This README file was generated on 2023-09-28 by Mina Anders.

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Smart Orchard Design Improves Crop Pollination
2. Author Information
A. Principal Investigators Contact Information
Name: Catrin Westphal
Institution: Georg-August Universtiy Göttingen
Address: Goettingen, Germany
Email: [e-mail]

B. Principal Investigators Contact Information
Name: Ingo Grass
Institution: Universität Hohenheim
Address: Stuttgart, Germany
Email: [e-mail]

C. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information
Name: Mina Anders
Institution: Georg-August Universtiy Göttingen
Address: Goettingen, Germany
Email: [e-mail]
3. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): July 2019- 2020
4. Geographic location of data collection: Louis Trichard, Limpopo, South Africa
5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of t...