NECTAR (2019 - 2023)

The 2016 report of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, states, in Sustainable Development Goal 2, that food production will need to increase by 50 percent globally to meet the growing human population demand.

Yields have risen steadily throughout the history of human cultivation. However, over the last decades, pollinator decline has emerged as a major threat. This is severe, knowing that yields of 87 out of 115 (76%) leading global food crops depend of animal-mediated pollination with bees as mean vectors. Pollination of these crops depends on the availability of wild and domesticated pollinators, nectar availability and characteristics, the environment and crop management practices.

The Nectar project is a pilot projects that aims to investigate to which extent melon could be used as a model system to investigate crop honeybee interaction. This will be carried out by comparative analysis of nectar and nectarless lines.

The project implicates three partners (INRAE GAFL, AE and IPS2).