No less than 75% of the world's most important food crops are to some extent dependent on pollination by animals. Even though several scientific studies demonstrate the important synergy between wild animals and crop pollination, up to now there has never been a consolidated global overview.

In the recently published database, called CropPol, an international team of more than 100 researchers, has mapped for first time the dependence of 48 commercial crops on wild pollinators across 32 different countries and across a timeline of more than three decades.

Using this database, we can now create a better understanding of the interplay between wild pollinators and crops. It can also create an understanding of the significance of the loss of pollinators in different parts of the world for specific crops when biodiversity comes under pressure as a result of changes in landscape and climate.

In Denmark, two research groups from the University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University have collaborated closely to contribute to the new database. Aarhus University is represented by Yoko Luise Dupont from the Social-Ecological Systems Simulation Centre at the Department of Ecoscience.

"The database has been created to link data published in scientific studies from all over the world. CropPol offers researchers a unique opportunity to explore connections between pollination and seed/fruit setting; both general global trends and for specific crops. This will enable us to work on sustainable solutions that can become part of the green transition.

This is an important area, as changes in the climate and land use play a crucial role in both nature and agriculture. CropPol also encourages research collaboration across countries and continents, and it is a powerful tool for addressing global challenges such as food safety and loss of biodiversity," says Yoko Luise Dupont, senior researcher.

Global outlook

The global functionality of the database and its public accessibility make it extremely innovative and it could be a crucial element in a number of scientific questions in the long term, explains Associate Professor Bo Dalsgaard, who is one of the participating researchers from the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution & Climate at the GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen:

"Three-quarters of the world's commercial crops are dependent on animal pollination for seed and fruit setting to a greater or lesser extent, . Even though we can grow crops such as rice, corn and wheat, that do not depend on animal pollination, I believe we all want a diverse selection of food products in our supermarkets. It is therefore vital that we have more knowledge, and throughout the world there’s also been increasing interest in understanding how global changes affect the critical ecosystem service that pollination gives to us humans. However, as standardised data on crop pollination is difficult to obtain, we’ve only had limited opportunity to see global trends and challenges.

Now we can do this with CropPol, and there are exciting times ahead as we can now identify more accurately how changes in landscape and the climate are destroying the interplay between plants and animals. We in Denmark are therefore delighted to be able to contribute to the database," says Bo Dalsgaard.

CropPol was created by gathering data and finds from a wide variety of research, and the ambition is for the database to be dynamic and regularly expanded with new knowledge and more data points. The gigantic knowledge bank will make it possible for everyone – with or without a scientific background – to access knowledge.

Read more about the international project on this website.

An article has been published in the scientific magazine Ecology, which also includes descriptions of the project and the many sets of raw data that form the basis for the work. The article can be accessed here, with more information about the type of study and the authors.

Contact:
Senior researcher Yoko Luise Dupont,
Department of Ecoscience
Aarhus University,
Tel. no.: +45 87159046
Email: yoko.dupont@ecos.au.dk