Resumen

TERESINHA MALERBO-SOUZA, Darclet  y  LUIZ HALAK, André. Effect of bee-flower interaction on fruit production in orange sweet crop (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck). Zootecnia Trop. [online]. 2013, vol.31, n.1, pp.78-93. ISSN 0798-7269.

The objectives of this work were to study the floral biology, biodiversity and behavior of pollinators in flowering orange (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck), variety “Pera-Rio”, in six different places, in six years, and its effect on fruit production. The frequency of insects was obtained by counting the fi rst 10 minutes at a time, from 7h00 to 18h00, with three replications. For fruit set, 300 fl ower buds were marked, 150 discovered and 150 of them kept covered, preventing the visit of the insects. Fruits were evaluated for count, number of buds and seeds, weighed (g), height (cm), width (cm), flesh thickness (mm), volume (ml) and pH juice. The insects more frequent observed were honeybees Apis mellifera, others Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Vespidea and Coleoptera (beetles). Africanized bees preferred to collect nectar compared to pollen. Trigona spinipes bees preferred to collect pollen compared to nectar and Lepidoptera (butterfl ies) feeding on nectar. It was observed 9.6% increase in fertilization of the fl owers and 7.35% in fruit production visited freely. The Africanized honeybee was more frequent species in the fl owers. There was an increase in fruit set of flowers with the presence of insects. The fruits that were visited by pollinators were higher, sweeter, with more seeds and quantity of juice.

Palabras clave : bees; insects; orange; pollination.

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