Bee Biodiversity Critical for Crops
Posted on August 9th, 2018 by Mary Lord
Bees are among North America’s most important agricultural asset, increasing yields in roughly three-quarters of our crops. But as researchers funded by the National Science Foundation are learning, plants need a diversity of pollinators – and everyday gardeners can help.
Filed under: K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features | Comments Off on Bee Biodiversity Critical for Crops
Tags: agriculture, bees, crops, ecology, Environmental Engineering, Environmental science, farming, National Science Foundation, NSF, pollinators, Rachael Winree, Research, Rutgers
From the air or highway, America’s fruited plains present a uniform vista of vast abundance. Not to Amy Kaleita. The associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University sees a “somewhat chaotic” array of micro-plots, each with unique hydrology, root depths, soil characteristics – all of them ripe opportunities for smart technology to enhance both sustainability and food production using “precision conservation.”
In this three-part activity, students in grades 5 to 7 act as agricultural engineers, learning about and testing the effectiveness of a sustainable pest-control technique that uses organic waste and sunlight rather than toxic chemicals to reduce weeds. 
