Month: June 2012

Sips: Starbucks news

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On June 26, 2012

In Coffee news and miscellany, Starbucks

It’s no wonder why news about Starbucks prompts such strong reactions in people. Some weeks there will be an announcement about a really worthwhile initiative, and only a little while later, something sort of repulsive.

  • Awesome: Starbucks will be the first private investor, committing $1.3 million, to the Fairtrade Access Fund. The Fund will provide farmers’ cooperatives with several types of long-term loans needed to renew their farms, adopt new technologies, or purchase equipment, as well as a facility that will allow farmers to get timely information on Fairtrade certification practices, crop management, and localized market information via their mobile phones. The Fund is being established by Incofin Investment Management, Fairtrade International, and the Grameen Foundation.
  • Also pretty cool: In mid-June, Starbucks launched the Indivisible collection, which includes Indivisible Blend Coffee and products such as coffee mugs to support Create Jobs for USA. With every purchase from the Indivisible collection, Starbucks will make a donation to Opportunity Finance Network for the Create Jobs for USA Fund to help create and retain jobs across the country.
  • Modest overall impact, but nice symbolism: a struggling Ohio company was chosen to produce the Indivisible mugs rather than outsourcing to another country.
  • And…just yuck: Starbucks’ Seattle’s Best Coffee division to sell coffee in thousands of Coinstar-owned kiosks in the U.S.

More pollinator research for Pollinator Week

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On June 23, 2012

In Coffee and the environment

My last post summarized research on current and historical pollinators and their role in robusta coffee fruit set in India, and I noted it was in recognition that this is Pollinator Week — an international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles.

I’ve summarized a couple of other papers on pollinators and coffee:

These are by no means the only research done on pollination, pollinators, and coffee! Below I have listed many peer-reviewed papers specifically dealing with bees and coffee pollination, and often the role of preserving shade in and near the coffee farm to preserve the habitat of pollinators and improve the fruit set of the coffee and other crops on the farm. If you are especially interested in one of the papers and do not have academic access, please let me know and I can try to provide you with a copy.

Meanwhile, I also encourage everybody to head over the the website of the Pollinator Partnership, which sponsors Pollinator Week. They have every resource you can think of regarding pollination and pollinators — not just bees, but all the other insects and animals that perform this incredible service — and their conservation and status. New this year is a free app (iPhone or Android) called BeeSmart, a database of hundreds of North American native plants for attracting pollinators.

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Research: Pollination and fruit set in India

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On June 19, 2012

In Research on coffee growing

Status of pollinators and their efficiency in coffee fruit set in a fragmented landscape mosiac in South India. Krishnan, Kushalappa, Shaanker, and Ghazoul. 2012. Basic and Applied Ecology 13:277-285.

The role of various types of pollination — self, wind, and insect — on robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) was studied in the Kodagu (Coorg) region in Karnataka state in south India. Robusta coffee is generally thought to be wind-pollinated, with fruit set being enhanced if cross-pollinated by insects.

Many insects (as well as other arthropods and birds) can act as pollinators, but in this study bees made up nearly 97% of the floral visitors to the coffee. The main pollinator was the giant Asian honeybee (Apis dorsata, a relative of the familiar European honeybee).  Apis cerana and Tetragonula iridipennis were the other two bee species that most frequently visited coffee flowers, and together with the giant Asian honeybee comprised 98.3% of all visits to coffee flowers. While pollination can occur from wind, bee pollination increased fruit set by 50% over wind.

Amegilla bee on lantana. This genus of bees were once common in coffee plots, but now feed on non-native lantana flowers. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

The authors noted that in other countries studied, the suite of pollinators usually comprised of many more species, rather than being dominated by so few as in the present study. They looked at a similar, though limited, study of pollinators of coffee done in the same area in 1915.  In that study, Apis cerana was the most common; this species has recently (early 1990s) declined due to a virus. The older study listed the second most abundant bees pollinating coffee as those in the genus Amegilla; in the present study these made up a mere 0.1% of visits.  The authors observed Amegilla bees foraging instead on a non-native invasive plant, Lantana camara. This indicates that invasive species may change the behavior of coffee pollinators — and this role of invasive species deserves more study.

The giant Asian honeybees nest in nearby forests in large trees. The authors concluded that, given the high dependence on pollination by this species, preservation of these trees in remnant forests within the foraging range of the bee is crucial to the successful production of coffee in this area.

This post is in recognition of Pollinator Week, an international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles.

Smitha Krishnan, Cheppudira. G. Kushalappa, R. Uma Shaanker, & Jaboury Ghazoul (2012). Status of pollinators and their efficiency in coffee fruit set in a fragmented landscape mosiac in South India. Basic and Applied Ecology: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2012.03.00

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