Promoting sustainable agriculture for pollinators

Threats to pollinators and pollination services that support agriculture and provide benefits to people are a worldwide problem.

AGRI4POL’s ambition is to assist the transition of agriculture from being a pressure on pollinators to becoming a positive force for managing and restoring pollinator biodiversity, crop pollination services, and co-benefits to ecosystems and people.

To achieve this transition towards more pollinator friendly farming systems and value chains, AGRI4POL will advance scientific understanding of crop-farming system-pollinator relationships from the crop gene to the agroecosystem.

By evaluating the genetic basis of crop floral traits attracting and rewarding crop pollinators, we will identify candidate crop lines suitable for breeding future pollinator-smart varieties.

We will study how pollinator-crop relationships are modified in space and time, by the diversity and rotation of crop species and varieties, by ecological infrastructure (EI) comprising landscape features and non-crop habitats, and by future climate or land-use change.

Synthesising this information from the gene to agroecosystem scale will allow us to provide integrated recommendations for optimising landscapes for crop pollination, pollinator biodiversity and multiple ecosystem benefits.

AGRI4POL research will be framed and supported by early and sustained multi-actor engagement along agri-food chains to assure its relevance and the acceptability of management options to farmers and society.

This multi-actor approach will also enable assessments of the socio-economic and policy obstacles and opportunities affecting the feasibility and uptake of pollinator-friendly farming at [sub]national, European and international scales.

AGRI4POL will therefore showcase to farmers, agri-food actors, policymakers and society the importance of pollinator-friendly farming to food security and sustainability goals (EC Green Deal, Nature Restoration Law; UN SDGs).