Robotic bees for crop pollination: why drones cannot replace biodiversity

Potts, S. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2045-980X, Neumann, P., Vaissière, B. and Vereecken, N. J. (2018) Robotic bees for crop pollination: why drones cannot replace biodiversity. Science of the Total Environment, 642. pp. 665-667. ISSN 0048-9697 doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.06.114

Abstract/Summary

The notion that robotic crop pollination will solve the decline in pollinators has gained wide popularity recently (Fig. 1), and in March 2018 Walmart filed a patent for autonomous robot bees. However, w present six arguments showing that this is a technically and economically inviable 'solution' at present and poses substantial ecological and moral risks: (1) despite recent advances, robotic pollination is far from being able to replace bees to pollinate crops efficiently; (2) using robots is very unlikely to be economically viable; (3) there would be unacceptably high environmental costs; (4) wider ecosystems would be damaged; (5) it would erode the values of biodiversity; and, (6) relying on robotic pollination could actually lead to major food insecurity.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/77936
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.06.114
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Sustainable Land Management > Centre for Agri-environmental Research (CAER)
Publisher	Elsevier
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