Field Work

Yesterday morning we started our day with a beautiful hike up the hill to our research site in the apple orchards. The road was hilly and steep, with lots of twists and turns that provided excellent views of the Kullu Valley and the small farming villages. We crossed paths with famers carrying crops on their backs, and children walking to school. 

Girls on their way to school.

Farmers sorting tomatoes to bring into town.

Views of the village Nashala and the orchards that we would be working in for the day.

The hillside is covered in tall pine trees.

The locals rely on snow melt from the higher peaks of the Himalayas to bring water down the hills and into the villages.

There doesn't seem to be a good system in place for solid waste removal. 

The walk was lovely and it felt great to be outdoors! It was about a 2 mile walk to the apple orchard that we were going to study. Once we arrived our group broke into two teams. There were two jobs for our teams:

1. We had to count the leaves on new growth branches. The scientists had 9 apple trees marked that they have been studying, and 3 branches from each of those trees were marked for leaf counting. Every season they count the leaves on those 3 branches to track the tree's growth rate and apple production. It was a little challenging at times trying to keep an accurate count on all those leaves!

2. Our team's other job was to walk the orchard and observe the ground flowers, take samples, and tape them into a booklet for botanists to identify later.  We also noted what types of pollinators we were seeing in the orchard. There are about 7 types of bees and many beautiful butterflies visiting small flowering plants in the orchard.

The scientists use the information that we gathered to help them better understand the complicated eceosystem involved in fruit production. Apples are the Kullu Valley's main crop and bring the farmers the most money. They grow many of the varieties of apples that we buy in the grocery stores in the USA. Red Delicious is very common in the valley. Fuji, Honey Crisp, Granny Smith, and Gala apples are also grown. Global warming keeps shifting the growing area further north in the valley. The apple trees need to receive at least 6 inches of snowfall every winter in order to bear fruit in the spring, but global warming is bringing less and less snowfall into the valley every year. If there isn't enough snowfall the trees in the orchard die.

Another factor that has effected fruit production is the lack of pollinating insects. Apple trees require 100% pollination in order to bear fruit. This means that farmers have to plant two types of apple trees in their orchards. They rely on bees and butterflies to find the flowers from these two types of apple trees and carry the pollen from one type of flower and mix it with the pollen from another type of flower. This process is called pollination, and it is essential to growing fruits and vegetables. It's a very complicated process and it involves a delicate ecosystem that cannot be disrupted. 

Scientists are finding that there are less and less pollinating insects visiting the orchards every year. There are three factors that they believe are contributing to this crisis:

1. Global Bee Vanishing is problem around the world. The bees do not come back and visit their hives, so farmers have to pay bee keepers to bring bees into their fields to help with pollination. This cuts into the profit farmers make from their crops.

2. A lack of native flowering plants in the orchards for native butterflies to lay their eggs onto. Butterflies are very selective about where they will lay there eggs, so if the plants they need aren't in the orchard, then butterflies won't be in the orchard either.

3. The use of pesticides is relatively new to the Kullu Valley. Pesticides kill all the insects including the pollinators! Plus, the chemicals mix into the soils and run into the rivers and ground water that humans use. This has ill effects on human health. Also, there is the issue of how to properly dispose of the solid waste that the pesticides create. The Kullu Valley isn't equipped to deal with all the waste from the plastic bottles and bags used to store pesticides.

Plastic bags and bottles from pesticides that farmers use are often left on the ground of the apple orchards.

Scientist are trying to work with the local farmers to help them increase their fruit production in their orchards. One solution scientists have developed to help the pollinator problem is to attach pollinator bags to the branches of the apple trees. The bags are a mixture of apple blossoms, pollen and water that is supposed to encourage bees snd butterflies to visit the trees. It's kind of like perfume for pollinators.

A pollinator bag.

 

Once we were finished collecting our data for the morning we stopped at local temple for a picnic lunch. There was also a primary school next to the temple.

The temple is in a sacred park where no trees can be removed.

Lunch!

Recess at the local school.

On our way back down the hill we were fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct more research at the ancient farming village of Nashala. The village was fascinating to explore because it really is at the crossroads of the old world meeting the new world. Some of the house are hundreds of years old and some are brand new construction. The unique charm of Nashala attracts many Bollywood directors to the area. The village has been in several Indian films.

The old homes are constructed from wood and stone. The livestock live on the bottom floor and the people live upstairs. It's like the barn is under the house. 

Bee hives were built directly into the exterior walls of the old houses so that hives and bees were next to the fields.

New construction homes are mostly brick and do not have built-in hives for bees.

The villagers are pretty self-sufficient and everyone works together to feed, house, clothe everyone in the village.

A woman weaving cloth for clothes in the village.

Villagers

Scientists speaking with a villager about bees and pesticides.

It was a fascinating day and it was a unique learning opportunity to see how the issues of global warming and food production directly effect peoples lives.