Is there a pollination deficit in insect-pollinated crops in Switzerland?

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Inadequate pollination by insects can lead to yield and quality losses with agricultural crops, e.g. deformed fruits in the case of strawberries.

In arable-crop, fruit and vegetable production, the harvest quantity and quality of many crops depend on whether they are adequately pollinated by insects. Increasingly, however, there are indications that honey bees, wild bees and other pollinators are coming under pressure from disease, habitat loss, and possibly further harmful environmental impacts. This raises the question of whether the yields of insect-pollinated crops in Switzerland are being negatively affected. Using meta-analyses and spatially explicit modelling, we attempt to answer this question for the most important insect-pollinated crops in their respective growing regions.

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