Pollinators face multiple pressures and there is evidence of populations in decline. As demand for insect-pollinated crops increases, crop production is threatened by shortfalls in pollination services. Understanding the extent of current yield deficits due to pollination and identifying opportunities to protect or improve crop yield and quality through pollination management is therefore of international importance. To explore the extent of “pollination deficits,” where maximum yield is not being achieved due to insufficient pollination, we used an extensive dataset on a globally important crop, apples. We quantified how these deficits vary between orchards and countries and we compared “pollinator dependence” across different apple varieties. We found evidence of pollination deficits and, in some cases, risks of overpollination were even apparent for which fruit quality could be reduced by too much pollination. In almost all regions studied we found some orchards performing significantly better than others in terms of avoiding a pollination deficit and crop yield shortfalls due to suboptimal pollination. This represents an opportunity to improve production through better pollinator and crop management. Our findings also demonstrated that pollinator dependence varies considerably between apple varieties in terms of fruit number and fruit quality. We propose that assessments of pollination service and deficits in crops can be used to quantify supply and demand for pollinators and help to target local management to address deficits although crop variety has a strong influence on the role of pollinators.

中文翻译：

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减少授粉不足和解决重要昆虫授粉作物产量不足的机会

传粉者面临多重压力，并且有证据表明种群数量正在下降。随着对昆虫授粉作物的需求增加，作物生产受到授粉服务短缺的威胁。因此，了解由于授粉导致的当前产量不足的程度，并确定通过授粉管理保护或提高作物产量和质量的机会，具有国际重要性。为了探索“授粉不足”的程度，即由于授粉不足而无法实现最大产量，我们使用了关于全球重要作物苹果的广泛数据集。我们量化了果园和国家之间这些赤字的差异，并比较了不同苹果品种的“传粉媒介依赖性”。我们发现了授粉缺陷的证据，在某些情况下，过度授粉的风险甚至很明显，因为过多的授粉可能会降低果实质量。在几乎所有研究的地区，我们发现一些果园在避免授粉不足和由于次优授粉导致作物产量不足方面表现明显优于其他果园。这代表了通过更好的传粉媒介和作物管理来提高产量的机会。我们的研究结果还表明，在果实数量和果实质量方面，不同苹果品种的传粉媒介依赖性差异很大。我们建议，尽管作物品种对授粉媒介的作用有很大影响，但对授粉服务和作物不足的评估可用于量化传粉媒介的供需，并有助于针对当地管理解决不足。