Vol. 11, Special Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Divya H Patel and JJ Pastagia

Abstract:
Insect pollinators are flower visiting insects that forage on flowering plants to obtain plant provided food. Flower-visiting insects have the potential to transfer male gametes to the female gametes while foraging, resulting in pollination. Cucurbits like cucumber, squash, pumpkin, Cantaloupes and melons are cross pollinated crops. They need insect pollinators, especially honey bees for pollination and proper fruit set. In case of poor pollination, small sized and deformed fruit are produced. The experiment on the abundance of different flower visitors and their foraging behaviour in cucumber was undertaken at college farm of Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari during summer, 2018. Cucumber flowers visited by three species of honey bees viz., Apis florea, A. cerana, A. dorsata as well as lepidopterans, dipterans, coleopterans and hemipterans. Among different flower visitors, honey bees were the major visitors of cucumber flower constituted 70.45 per cent which was followed by coleopterans (9.34%), hemipterans (9.09%), lepidopterans (7.58%) and dipterans (3.54%). The mean foraging activity of flower visitors was more at 10:00h.