A pilot study on the effects of pollination has shown that there could be a nutritional benefit to the fruit.
The research, backed by Norman Collett Ltd, focused on Bramley’s Seedling apples in commercial plantings in Kent as part of a project to analyse mineral content.
The study, which looks set to develop into a three-year project, capitalised on previous findings from New Zealand in a simple experiment, which saw researchers introduce a number of Red Mason bees to an orchard, where equivalent pairs of blossom on 25 trees had been selected and of those, one of each pair was bagged with an air and rain permeable bag to exclude pollinators.
The lab analysis showed that where pollinators had acess to the flowers, the fruit had 21.6 per cent more calcium while five other trace elements showed elevated levels, ranging from a 2.2 per cent uplift for magnesium to a 38.1 per cent boost for zinc.
However, one recommendation is that densities need to be at last five times higher to maximise impact and increase profitability in each orchard.
Robin Dean from The Red Beehive Co Ltd said: “We wanted to look at other effects of pollination, not just on yield and quality as is normally the case. We have been using one orchard as a control orchard and we have two years of data on this. Next year, we are going to flood the area with pollinators and see the effect.”
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