Dümmen Orange, in collaboration with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, has won the Plantum Sustainability Award 2024 for developing a method to test and breed plants for insect-friendliness.
Pollinators such as wild bees and hoverflies have significantly declined in numbers over the past 30 years. This alarming trend poses a serious threat to our ecosystem.
Bees and other insects are becoming increasingly dependent on garden plants. There is a growing trend in society to replace paving with flowers and plants specifically for bees. However, not all crops — and certainly not all varieties within a crop — are attractive to insects. The method developed by Dümmen Orange and Naturalis tests for nectar volume, sugar concentration, number of flowers, and color. The combinations and variations of these traits determine whether a plant is attractive to insects. This way, we can discover which plants make bees happy and which are truly insect-friendly.
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