Do bees influence the quality of your morning coffee?
Aristizábal, Natalia
Aristizábal, Natalia
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Abstract
Bees provide valuable pollination services in agriculture. Still, it is unknown how cross-pollination by bees influences crop quality traits, which determine nutrition value and prices. This study tests how bees influence the coffee quality or trade-offs between yield over quality. We conducted bee-exclusion and hand-pollination experiments on a Costa Rican coffee farm controlling for factors usually associated with quality. After harvest, we evaluated coffee yield and quality attributes (i.e., aroma, taste) under standardized roasting and certified tasting protocols. Preliminary results show cross-pollination does not affect yield as previously reported – indicating potential trade-offs in resource allocation during berry production.
Description
Graduate
Date
2022-01-01