Food
CropLife Asia announced today that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Asian Apicultural Association (AAA) to support a research initiative to catalogue and study the bee species and populations in Asia. CropLife Asia Executive Director Dr. Siang Hee Tan and AAA President Dr. Siriwat Wongsiri signed the agreement at Singapore’s M Hotel.
It is estimated that at least 87 out 115 global primary food crops require some form of animal pollination, and insect pollination occupies a high value in the production of daily produce including vegetables, fruits, edible oil and spices.
Comprehensive data on pollinators in Asia is scarce and much of the information that does exist has been derived using an array of different methods, making it difficult to draw comparisons across geographies and time. To better understand the state of Asia’s pollinators, a first step in protecting them and promoting their use in agriculture, CropLife Asia and AAA have agreed to collaborate in developing a harmonized method to survey the pollinators in key Asian countries.
“When it comes to pollinators in Asia, there is a general lack of both awareness as to the important role they play in agriculture as well as reliable data reflecting their overall health,” said Dr. Tan. “Our industry has a responsibility to work with chief stakeholders who have unique perspective and expertise in this area, and our partnership with AAA is an important and impactful step forward on this front.”
A key component of the MoU is developing a universally-applicable, harmonized method to capture the state of bee health in particular in key countries across the region. Specifically, this will entail surveying bee species in order to identify major pollinators (including indigenous subspecies) and their relative abundance.
