Pollination and Plant Resources Change the Nutritional Quality of Almonds for Human Health

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

Insect-pollinated crops provide important nutrients for human health. Pollination, water and nutrients available to crops can influence yield, but it is not known if the nutritional value of the crop is also influenced. Almonds are an important source of critical nutrients for human health such as unsaturated fat and vitamin E. We manipulated the pollination of almond trees and the resources available to the trees, to investigate the impact on the nutritional composition of the crop. The pollination treatments were: (a) exclusion of pollinators to initiate self-pollination and (b) hand cross-pollination; the plant resource treatments were: (c) reduced water and (d) no fertilizer. In an orchard in northern California, trees were exposed to a single treatment or a combination of two (one pollination and one resource). Both the fat and vitamin E composition of the nuts were highly influenced by pollination. Lower proportions of oleic to linoleic acid, which are less desirable from both a health and commercial perspective, were produced by the self-pollinated trees. However, higher levels of vitamin E were found in the self-pollinated nuts. In some cases, combined changes in pollination and plant resources sharpened the pollination effects, even when plant resources were not influencing the nutrients as an individual treatment. This study highlights the importance of insects as providers of cross-pollination for fruit quality that can affect human health, and, for the first time, shows that other environmental factors can sharpen the effect of pollination. This contributes to an emerging field of research investigating the complexity of interactions of ecosystem services affecting the nutritional value and commercial quality of crops.

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummere90082
ZeitschriftPLoS ONE
Jahrgang9
Ausgabenummer2
Anzahl der Seiten7
ISSN1932-6203
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 27.02.2014

Dokumente

DOI

Zuletzt angesehen

Publikationen

  1. Lingering illness or sudden death? Pre-exit employment developments in German establishments
  2. Über die Wahrnehmung und Wirksamkeit des Feedbacks einer mathematikbezogenen Lernplattform
  3. FragSAD: A database of diversity and species abundance distributions from habitat fragments
  4. Contributions to the sustainable development goals in life cycle sustainability assessment
  5. Die Lesbarkeit der Bilder als erkenntniskritische Kategorie der Kulturwissenschaft um 1900
  6. Drivers of productivity and its temporal stability in a tropical tree diversity experiment
  7. Dis/Ability and Digital Cultures. A Media-Archaeological Perspective on Inclusion as a Cipher
  8. Modelling ammonia losses after field application of biogas slurry in energy crop rotations
  9. Journal of Public Affairs, Special issue: “The marketing and public affairs of sustainability”
  10. Umweltverträglichkeitsuntersuchung von Offshore Windparks in der Deutschen Nord- und Ostsee
  11. The impact of rear-view mirror distance and curvature on judgements relevant to road safety
  12. Ideological Construction of Deviance in Street Children’s Discourse in Southwestern Nigeria
  13. Gleichstellungsarbeit an Hochschulen - weiterhin vorrangig ein Konzept der Frauenförderung
  14. Die Zukunft Europas – erweiterte Sichtweisen / Una più ampia visione per il futuro dell’Europa
  15. Sight or scent: lemur sensory reliance in detecting food quality varies with feeding ecology.
  16. Selbstgesteuertes Lernen mit Neuen Medien im Fremdsprachenunterricht - Eine Bestandsaufnahme
  17. Constructing Identities and Narrating the Self: Sherman Alexie’s Flight as a Fictional Memoir
  18. BGH: Qualifikation einer mit einem Erbverzicht verbundenen Zuwendung als Schenkung (Anmerkung)
  19. Grundsätzliches zu weltanschaulichen Voraussetzungen naturwissenschaftlicher Welterkenntnis
  20. Diversity and composition of arboreal beetle assemblages in tropical pasture afforestations
  21. Learning Rotation Sensitive Neural Network for Deformed Objects' Detection in Fisheye Images