June 5, 2013 — Many fruits, nuts and other food crops depend on pollinating insects for success. Yet modern farms often grow such plants in large monocultures, discouraging the presence of pollinators by reducing the availability of diverse, insect-friendly native vegetation. Looking for a way to make large plantations more welcoming to these beneficial insects, researchers in South Africa added patches of native flowering plants to mango orchards. They found that while mangoes distant from native vegetation showed 47 percent lower pollinator diversity than those near natural settings, mangoes in the orchards with small plots of native plants showed only a 7 percent drop. Not only that, but the orchards with patches of natives produced an extra 1.5 kilograms of fruit per tree — more than making up for the cost of the added plantings. Photo by Malcolm NQ (Flickr | Creative Commons)