Camilo Lab Collaborating with UMSL-led Team to Study Pollination in Urban Orchards
Urban orchards are essential food resources, yet we know little about the pollinators and resulting fruit yield per year.
A team of researchers from six institutions across the St. Louis region, led by Dr. Aimee Dunlap of UMSL, will spend the next three years studying ways to maximize pollination in urban and suburban orchards with a new $633,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The team also includes Nathan Muchhala, an associate professor at UMSL; Ed Spevak, curator of invertebrates at the Saint Louis Zoo and director of the Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Institute Center for Native Pollinator Conservation; Nicole Miller-Struttmann, the Laurance L. Browning Jr. endowed assistant professor of biology at Webster University; Kyra Krakos, the coordinator of Sustainability & Environmental Stewardship and associate professor of biology at Maryville University; and Peter Hoch, curator emeritus at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
There’s been significant growth of urban agriculture in recent years along with increased attention to sustainability as people look for ways to mitigate the effects of climate change as well as address issues like poor nutrition and food insecurity in underserved communities.
But while commercial farms have developed ways to produce consistent levels of fruits and vegetables year after year, the yields coming from urban orchards are often less predictable. Some years might have an abundance of crops. Other years, there is only a small amount to collect at harvest time.
One goal for the researchers is to help people increase fruit production in urban and suburban gardens and level out their production year by year, so urban farms can be consistent sources of nutritious food in the communities where they grow.
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