Role of pollination in improving productivity of cashew – A review

Abstract

Cashew has become an important nut crop in India owing to its nutritional value and export earnings. The productivity of cashew in India is low because of several reasons and hence India imports raw nuts from other countries to meet the demand of its processing industries. Several studies have shown that inadequate pollination plays an important role in low productivity of cashew in addition to other factors. Hence, it is imperative to understand and address the issue of pollination in cashew to increase the productivity. In this regard, an attempt has been made here to review the research related to pollination in cashew.

Floral Maturation Indices of African Yam Bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa Hochst Ex. A. Rich) Harms (Fabaceae)

“…Insufficient understanding of species' floral biology has been repeatedly cited as a shortcoming in the recovery plan of endangered species (Tear et al, 1995;Clark et al, 2002), low productivity (Ganapathy et al, 2008;Eradasappa and Mohana, 2016) and poor initiation of applied research capable of leading to improvement of most underutilized species. Young et al (2007) further remarked that basic biological knowledge of a species can help to identify factors that limit their long-term persistence.…”

Detecting bee’s floral preference in cashew orchards: A path towards preservation and management of bee communities and improvement of cashew productivity in Côte d’Ivoire

“…To maintain this ringleader position in cashew production, and to improve its impact on Ivoirian society, it is important to understand the ecological factors supporting this success. Studies have reported that many biotic and abiotic factors may contribute to the success of cashew production [14][15][16] . Among these ecological factors, ecosystem services delivered by bees might play a major role.…”

“…Soro [17] and Bhattacharya [18] for example, demonstrated that the reproduction of cashew trees depends on cross-pollination due to bees mainly Apis mellifera. Likewise in Vietnam, Brazil, India, Ghana, and Benin studies have revealed that bee pollination is one of the key ecological factors that may increase cashew trees productivity and fruits quality [14,[19][20][21] . In these countries, some farmers have linked the cashew farming with beekeeping [20,[22][23][24] .…”

“…In these countries, some farmers have linked the cashew farming with beekeeping [20,[22][23][24] . This association has increased cashew trees productivity and fruits quality (form 10 kg/trees to 25 kg/trees) [22,23,25,26] Hence, bee foraging intensity has become essential for the reproduction of cashew trees [14,22,[27][28][29] . Recently, we noted during an empirical investigation in the cashew orchards from Hambol and Bounkani region (Côte d'Ivoire): (i) a few cashew trees with high foraging activity of bees including high yields, and (ii) many cashew trees with low foraging activity including low yields.…”

“…These flowers seem to be attractive and preferred by bees, and consequently explain formally the bees' preference. This preference of bees, could probably be due to the habitat types that surround the orchards, the position of preferred cashew trees in the orchards that are probably sundrenched with good climate influence due to the temperature and relative humidity [14,27,43] . Conversely, the assessed parameters classified the trees from category B as very rarely visited.…”