Doubling Income of Cauliflower Seed Producer Farmers of Vaishali District through Pollination Service by Apis mellifera Colonies

Abstract

A number of villages in Vaishali district have been engaged in growing cauliflower seeds and selling across the country with different brand names. The farmers traditionally produce seeds of local variety of early cauliflower Brassica oleracea under open field situation. Low seed yield and quality due to inadequate pollination is major problem of cauliflower seed producing farmers. Inadequate pollination in crops is due to several factors including lack of adequate number and diversity of pollinators. On farm trial was conducted by KVK, Vaishali, (DRPCAU, Pusa) on farmers field at Hajipur, Lalganj, Mahua and Mahnar. which are traditional producers of cauliflower seed. Cauliflower grown for seed production was covered by net of 100 m2 area in the farmer's field and the control plot was open pollinated farmer field of the same farmer. During anthesis, two honeybee colonies of A. mellifera containing approximately 10,000 bees in a bee box were kept inside the net house to aid the pollination. More number of bees was found visiting the crop under net house condition 6.05, 5.35, 5.05, 6.08 bees/ plant at all locations. Bees in the open conditions were found to spend less time on flower as compared to the net house conditions. Planned honeybee pollination was found to result maximum impact on the seed production with 15.50-19.10 seeds/pod in net pollination as compared to 13.60-17.20 seeds/pod in open condition. Similarly, average 1000 seed wt. in net pollinated condition was 3.30-4.19 gm whereas 3.00- 3.97 gm in open field condition, and the yield in net condition was in range 637-713 kg/ha as compared to 350-415kg/ha and additional income of 8 to10 lakh rupees/ha. All possible ways of increasing the sustainable productivity and carrying capacity of the farming systems in order to improve the livelihoods and doubling income of marginal households should be explored and use of pollination service by Italian bee keeping can be one of the options.