Flies that out-pollinate bees?

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

People rarely talk about flies and pollinators in the same breath, not to mention flies and farming, but it's time to rethink those relationships.

Using computer modelling, Alison Parker, a PhD candidate in the University of Toronto's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and her colleagues determined in 2013 that flies might be even better at pollination than bees because flies don't steal pollen for their own use.

Tasmanian vegetable grower Alan Wilson doesn't need a computer to prove the theory. Wilson uses three types of flies (and some bees) to pollinate the cauliflower seed plants that he grows inside a greenhouse.

Wilson breeds flies inside a hut made from burlap and tea tree wood, using carcasses that he "milks" for maggots. He grows out the maggots in trays made of the interior part of a coconut shell. "And there the maggots stay, in the bottom of the trays, because they're happy," Wilson recently told Down Under media outlet, ABC.

Austrian designer Katharina Unger also fancies herself a fly farmer – and thinks others can become one too. She's come up with Farm 432, a container to breed black soldier flies for their protein. In the container, which features many different compartments, it takes – you guessed it – only 432 hours to transform one gram of fly eggs into 2.4 kilograms of edible larvae.

"Black soldier fly adults don't eat, the larvae can be fed on biowaste, therefore the production almost costs no water or CO2," Unger writes on her website. BF