Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality

• Grant number: 23/11400-1
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Innovative Research in Small Business - PIPE
• Start date: January 01, 2024
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Animal Behavior
• Principal Investigator: João Marcelo Robazzi Bignelli Valente Aguiar
• Grantee: João Marcelo Robazzi Bignelli Valente Aguiar
• Company: João Marcelo Robazzi Bignelli Valente Aguiar
• CNAE: Cultivo de café ; Atividades de apoio à agricultura
• City: Piracicaba
• Pesquisadores principais: Marcela de Matos Barbosa
• Associated researchers: Maria Imaculada Zucchi
• Associated research grant: 21/06790-0 - Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality, AP.PIPE
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/03244-5 - Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality., BP.TT; 24/20856-1 - Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality., BP.TT; 24/04851-0 - Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality., BP.TT; 24/05217-2 - Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality., BP.TT; 23/17970-4 - Development of biomolecules for coffee pollination aiming to increase productivity and grain quality, BP.PIPE

Abstract

About 90% of the crops produced in the world depend on pollinators at a certain level. Among these pollinators, bees are responsible for the pollinator of 75% of the cultivated plants used for human feeding around the world. In Brazil, the value of pollination to food production is around R$ 43 billions annually. Among the crops of high importance for agriculture, the coffee (Coffee arabica) needs to be highlighted, as its contribution represents R$ 5,60 billions. Nowadays, it is known that one of the benefits of biotic pollination is 10 to 90% of productivity increase, as well as the improvement of the fruit quality. Besides its economic importance, the strategies used to boost productivity based on pollination are few in Brazil. Especially considering a sustainable environment, with high precision pollination, optimizing the production system. Training bees with the floral odor of target crops in the laboratory, previously to the flowering period, arises as an innovative proposal in the sense of filling this gap, as bees are able to learn and memorize food sources (the flowers' pollen and nectar) using their olfactory system. During the PIPE FAPESP Phase 1, our startup, PollinTech, obtained promising results, as we were able to develop and test in the lab a mixture of odors that resembles the natural coffee flowers in the olfactory perception of bees, and they learned to associate this mixture to food administrated inside the hive. However, for a good operation of this technique, it is essential to evaluate the efficiency of this training outside of the lab, in an operating environment (i.e., the target crops plantations). In Phase 2 we, thus, aim to test our solution for the coffee guided pollination in the field. (AU)