Recent declines in insect pollinators and the increasing dependence on insect pollination in agriculture present major challenges to ensuring future food production. As part of the effort to deal with this challenge, there is a pressing need to understand growers’ perceptions with regard to pollinator diversity and crop pollination management. At present, many growers are dependent on domesticated honey bees (Apis mellifera), however, targeted management strategies involving naturally occurring pollinator species might be necessary to ensure future crop pollination. In this study we used semi-structured interviews to explore growers’ knowledge about crop pollination and current practices to manage insect pollination in sweet cherry cultivation. Our findings suggest that growers have a clear understanding of the importance of pollination and its determining factors. However, with respect to their current pollination management, growers depend mainly on honey bees and only apply measures to enhance wild pollinator communities to a limited extent. Our study highlights the gap between the growers’ perception of the contribution of wild pollinators to crop pollination, and their efforts to manage these species. We conclude that this is due to a lack of communication of recent scientific findings on the contribution of pollinating insects to crop pollination through the information channels that are being used by growers today. It is therefore crucial that scientists, government and other stakeholders work together with growers and communicate scientific evidence as well as practical guidelines to growers.

中文翻译：

---

种植者对作物授粉的看法以及甜樱桃栽培中野生授粉媒介管理传粉服务的措施。

昆虫授粉媒介最近的减少以及农业对昆虫授粉的依赖性日益增加，对确保未来的粮食生产提出了重大挑战。作为应对这一挑战的努力的一部分，迫切需要了解种植者对授粉媒介多样性和作物授粉管理的看法。目前，许多种植者都依赖养蜂（Apis mellifera），但是涉及自然发生的传粉媒介物种的针对性管理策略可能对于确保将来的作物授粉是必要的。在这项研究中，我们使用半结构化访谈来探究种植者对作物授粉的知识以及当前在甜樱桃种植中管理昆虫授粉的实践。我们的发现表明，种植者对授粉的重要性及其决定因素有清晰的了解。但是，就目前的授粉管理而言，种植者主要依靠蜜蜂，仅在有限的范围内采取措施增强野生传粉媒介的种群。我们的研究突出了种植者对野生授粉媒介对作物授粉的贡献的认识与他们管理这些物种的努力之间的差距。我们得出的结论是，这是由于缺乏通过当今种植者使用的信息渠道传播有关授粉昆虫对农作物授粉的贡献的最新科学发现的信息。因此，至关重要的是，科学家，政府和其他利益相关者必须与种植者共同努力，并向种植者传达科学证据以及实用指南。