Robotic Pollinating Tools for Actinidia Crops

Pollination is a crucial biological process that underpins crop yield and quality, as well as sustains other ecosystem services essential for our planet’s life. Insects are the largest group of pollinators, particularly bees, handling the pollination of 71 of the 100 crops that contribute to 90% of the world's food supply. Nevertheless, both biotic and abiotic factors exert considerable influence on bee behaviour, which in turn affects the pollination process. Moreover, the alarming decline in bee populations, along with other essential insect pollinators, presents a significant challenge to natural pollination. This work focuses on Actinidia, a dioecious plant, i.e., with female and male flowers on separate plants, which introduces entropy into the pollination phase. In this plant, the number of pollinated seeds directly influences the size of Actinidia fruits, so the success of the pollination phase is fundamental. However, natural pollination in Actinidia is mainly entomophilic, i.e., by insects. Hence, the exploration of alternative approaches becomes essential. To address this need, there has been a growing interest in robotic solutions for pollination, these solutions present various tools to perform pollination. This work aims to study the available technologies to perform artificial pollination processes. A study of the different options in the literature is performed, analysing the advantages and disadvantages of each method to support the artificial pollination process.