Chinese researchers improved pollination and fruit set in orchard crops by distributing bee-collected pollen with drones, combining biological and robotic approaches to address pollinator decline.
Researchers in China tested an integrated approach to address this, distributing pollen over three pear orchards in Shanxi province using a specialised drone and preprogrammed navigation paths designed for full coverage of flowers.
First, though, they set out to find out whether pollen collected by bees or manually collected pollen would work best in the solution needed for drone application.