Tomatoesimage via Shutterstock
If you take a clump of very smart , passionate science oddball , divest them of sleep , fill them with booze , and put them in a way together , the conversations can take some pretty wild turns . That ’s what happened earlier this year , when I assist ScienceOnline 2012 , an annual assemblage of science diary keeper , blogger , scientists , librarians , public relations officers , and other people who are in the business of communicate about scientific discipline on the World Wide Web .
One night at the bar I ground myself let the cat out of the bag to a few people about inter - species intimate chicanery , whenBug Girlrevealed the naughty secret of how glasshouse tomatoes get made .
Tomatoes , she order us , respond best to what ’s call bombination pollination . This is when a bumblebee or other metal money of alone bee grab onto a plant and moves their flight muscles speedily , vacillate the plant life and dislodging the pollen . Some of the pollen lands on other parts of the same flora so it can self - pollinate , and still more covers the bee , who can then transfer it to another plant life for hybrid pollenation .
Some greenhouse tomato growers keep bees “ on stave ’ for this purpose , but in situations where solitary bees are n’t pronto available — in Australia , for example , where bumblebee are n’t native and there ’s a long account of problem with introduced specie — people have to get originative .
DIY
Some greenhouse growers use short , vibrating sticks called “ industrial pollination wand , ” but if the budget does n’t allow for that or they are n’t usable , Bug Girl order , a personal vibrator will do in a arrest . I ’ve found at least one instance where growers had to resort to this , and were n’t ashamed to talk about it . One twelvemonth , at theMarquita Farmin Watsonville , CA , money was tight and the six pollenation wands they needed would have set them back a few hundred dollars . fortuitously , one worker acknowledge a piazza where they could get vibrators on the cheap . The farm order a whole case , record some drinking straw to them to make a small , shaky wand , and do about thrill the tomato plants with sex toys .
