Wiebke Kämper

Wiebke Kämper
University of Göttingen | GAUG · Functional Agrobiodiversity

Dr. rer. nat.
My current research addresses ecological intensification in horticulture through e.g. improving pollination services.

About

47
Publications
9,674
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
590
Citations
Introduction
My research focuses on pollination biology and plant reproductive performance. I explore opportunities to increase yield and quality in (tropical) horticulture through better understanding of crop nutrition during pollination and the effects of cross-pollination on fruit quality. I also use non-destructive technologies (HSI) to predict the nutritional quality of fruit and have set-up and managed large field-based and farm-based experiments to address my theoretical and applied interests.
Additional affiliations
April 2017 - September 2017
Technical University of Darmstadt
Position
  • Research Associate
Description
  • Investigating animal-mediated ecosystem process rates in forests and grasslands across climate and land-use gradients
November 2017 - November 2019
University of the Sunshine Coast
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • Assessing pollen flow in macadamia and avocado orchards, and identifying the role of introduced and native bees
December 2019 - March 2022
Griffith University
Position
  • Research Fellow
Description
  • Exploring opportunities to increase yield and quality in horticulture through better understanding of crop nutrition during pollination
Education
June 2012 - December 2016
Ruhr University Bochum
Field of study
  • Pollination biology
September 2010 - August 2011
The University of Sydney
Field of study
  • Biology
September 2009 - August 2011
Leiden University
Field of study
  • Biology (Evolution, Biodiversity and Conservation)

Publications

Publications (47)
Article
Full-text available
Breeding programs for horticultural tree crops focus on enhancing productivity, including developing tolerance to pests and diseases and improving crop quality. Pollination services are often critical for crop production, and pollen parents can affect crop quality. We often do not know which pollen parents produce highest quality offspring or, in s...
Article
Full-text available
Pollination services are critical in entomophilous crops. Relationships between pollinator visits and fruit set and mass are complex and optimal strategies to improve pollination are poorly defined. We often do not understand what proportions of the crop result from self‐ or cross‐pollination, how cross‐pollination affects crop quality and how far...
Article
Full-text available
Global fruit and nut yields are affected by shortfalls in pollinator populations, and pollen limitation is most prevalent among tropical, bee-pollinated and self-incompatible plants. Macadamia is a subtropical, bee-pollinated crop in which some cultivars have been found to be highly outcrossing. We aimed to determine the extent of outcrossing and i...
Article
Full-text available
Yield in many crops is affected by abscission during the early stages of fruitlet development. The reasons for fruitlet abscission are often unclear but they may include genetic factors because, in some crops, self-pollinated fruitlets are more likely to abscise than cross-pollinated fruitlets. Pollen parentage can also affect final fruit size and...
Article
Full-text available
Carbohydrate levels are important regulators of the growth and yield of tree crops. Current methods for measuring foliar carbohydrate concentrations are time consuming and laborious, but rapid imaging technologies have emerged with the potential to improve the effectiveness of tree nutrient management. Carbohydrate concentrations were predicted usi...
Article
Full-text available
The productivity of many tree crops is limited by low yield, partly due to high rates of fruitlet abscission during early fruit development. Early studies suggested that cross-pollinated fruitlets may be selectively retained during fruit development, although paternity testing of fruitlets to test this hypothesis was technically challenging. We use...
Article
Full-text available
Pollination is essential for the reproductive output of crops. Anthropogenic disturbance and global pollinator decline limit pollination success, reducing the quantity or quality of pollen. Relationships between the abundance of flower visitors and fruit production are often poorly understood. We aimed to (1) identify and quantify flower visitors i...
Article
Full-text available
Rapid assessment tools are required for monitoring crop nutrient status and managing fertiliser applications in real time. Hyperspectral imaging has emerged as a promising assessment tool to manage crop nutrition. This study aimed to determine the potential of hyperspectral imaging for predicting foliar nutrient concentrations in avocado trees and...
Article
Full-text available
Rapid ripeness assessment of fruit after harvest is important to reduce post-harvest losses by sorting fruit according to the duration until they become ready to eat. However, there has been little research on non-destructive estimation of the ripeness and ripening speed of avocado fruit. Unlike previous methods, which classify the ripeness of frui...
Article
Full-text available
Predicting the ripening time of avocado fruit accurately could improve fruit storage and decrease food waste. No reasonable method exists for predicting the postharvest ripening time of avocado fruit during transport, storage or retail display. Here, hyperspectral imaging ranging from 388 to 1005 nm with 462 bands was applied to 316 ‘Hass’ and 160...
Article
Full-text available
Tree crop yield is highly dependent on fertiliser inputs, which are often guided by the assessment of foliar nutrient levels. Traditional methods for nutrient analysis are time-consuming but hyperspectral imaging has potential for rapid nutrient assessment. Hyperspectral imaging has generally been performed using the adaxial surface of leaves altho...
Article
Full-text available
Cross-pollination can increase fruit production in both self-incompatible and self-compatible fruit crops. However, it is often unclear what proportions of the fruit crop result from cross-pollination. We quantified the proportion of cross-pollinated seeds and the proportion of fertilised seeds in two strawberry cultivars, Red Rhapsody and Sundrenc...
Article
Full-text available
Boron plays a critical role in pollination and fertilization and can affect fruit set and yield. We applied 0 g, 15 g (manufacturer recommendation) or 30 g boron pre-flowering to Hass avocado trees to determine the effects on fruit set, fruitlet paternity, yield, fruit size, mineral nutrient concentrations and fatty acid composition. The boron appl...
Article
Full-text available
Many tree crops experience sub-optimal yields and low fruit quality due to inadequate pollination, low fruit set, and poor crop nutrition. Boron (B) is a critical crop nutrient for fruit set because B levels affect pollen germination and pollen tube growth. However, the relationship between floral B concentration and fruit set is not well understoo...
Article
The use of biochar is changing, and the combined application of biochar with fertilizer is increasingly gaining acceptance. However, the yield gains results reported in the existing literature through the co-application of fertilizer with biochar are conflicting. To resolve this, we utilized a meta-analysis of 627 paired data points extracted from...
Article
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) depend entirely on floral resources (pollen and nectar) in their surrounding landscape to satisfy their dietary needs. Honeybee diets in temperate areas have been well studied, and there is increasing evidence that floral diversity is critical for honeybee health. Tropical forests often contain high floral diversity but h...
Article
Background and aims: Pollen limitation is most prevalent among bee-pollinated plants, self-incompatible plants, and tropical plants. However, we have very little understanding of the extent to which pollen limitation affects fruit set in mass-flowering trees despite tree crops accounting for at least 600 million tons of the 9,200 million tons of a...
Article
Full-text available
Cross-pollination can improve fruit yield, fruit size and nutritional quality of many food crops. However, we rarely understand what proportions of the crop result from self- or cross-pollination, how cross-pollination affects crop quality, and how far pollen is transported by pollinators. Management strategies to improve pollination services are c...
Article
Full-text available
Premise: Progeny of avocado (Persea americana) are highly variable due to high levels of heterozygosity. Breeding programs need molecular resources to allow the assessment of genetic differences and the selection of genotypes. Polymorphisms that uniquely identify different avocado cultivars provide a valuable tool to accelerate avocado research an...
Article
Full-text available
Decomposition, vegetation regeneration, and biological control are essential ecosystem functions, and animals are involved in the underlying processes, such as dung removal, seed removal, herbivory, and predation. Despite evidence for declines of animal diversity and abundance due to climate change and land-use intensification, we poorly understand...
Article
The decline of both managed and wild bee populations has been extensively reported for over a decade now, with growing concerns amongst the scientific community. Also, evidence is growing that both managed and feral honey bees may exacerbate threats to wild bees. In Australia, there are over 1600 native bee species and introduced European honey bee...
Preprint
Full-text available
Plant reproductive output is increasingly pollen limited, and cross-pollination can improve fruit yield, fruit size and nutritional quality of many food crops. However, we rarely understand what proportions of the crop result from self- or cross-pollination, how cross-pollination affects crop quality, and how far pollen is transported by pollinator...
Article
Full-text available
Fatty acid composition and mineral nutrient concentrations can affect the nutritional and postharvest properties of fruit and so assessing the chemistry of fresh produce is important for guaranteeing consistent quality throughout the value chain. Current laboratory methods for assessing fruit quality are time-consuming and often destructive. Non-de...
Data
Table of contents S1: Relation of seed removal rate with short-term precipitation S2: Details of herbivory measurements S3: Details of processing explanatory data S4: GLMM results in detail S5: Comparison of the mean effect sizes of short-term vs. medium-term land-use variables in grasslands S6: Process rates in detail S7: Effects of the vegetation...
Article
Full-text available
Tree nuts play an important role in healthy diets, but their economic value and nutritional quality may be affected by their size and paternity. We assessed relationships between nut size and kernel recovery, the incidence of whole kernels, fatty acid composition and mineral nutrient concentrations in three macadamia cultivars, "Daddow", "816" and...
Article
Full-text available
Cross-pollination is essential for the reproduction of self-incompatible plants and it improves the yield and fruit quality of some self-compatible plants. Cross-pollination of clonal horticultural crops is achieved only when pollen from one cultivar reaches the stigma of another cultivar. We quantified self- and cross-fertilisation rates in macada...
Article
Application of synthetic herbicides is currently the most widely used and cost-effective methods to assist with revegetation programs. However, the effects of short-term application of herbicides such as Roundup®, acetic acid, BioWeed™ and Slasher® as compared with mulch, on soil microbial biomass and microbial diversity remain unknown. This study...
Conference Paper
Are macadamia yields limited by the level of cross-pollination? Most macadamia nuts come from cross-pollination after bees move pollen from one variety to another. We determined whether trees are already receiving enough cross-pollination or whether more flowers need to be cross-pollinated. We cross-pollinated whole trees in an orchard that conta...
Article
Full-text available
Stingless bees are highly social pollinators in tropical ecosystems. Besides floral pollen and nectar, they collect substantial amounts of plant resins, which are used for nest construction/maintenance and defence against antagonists. Moreover, some stingless bees extract chemical compounds from resins and incorporate them in their cuticular chemic...
Conference Paper
Do macadamia nuts really come from self-pollination? We investigated whether macadamia nuts are cross-pollinated (where bees move pollen from one cultivar to another cultivar) or self-pollinated (where bees move pollen from flower to flower within one cultivar). We used genetic markers to test the paternity of nuts in two orchards. One orchard con...
Article
Wild pollinators are declining in abundance, diversity and richness and this puts the ecosystem function pollination at risk. Here, we investigated how land-use intensity and the three main components of land use used on the study sites (mowing, grazing, fertilisation) affect bumblebee visitation to bird’s-foot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, using a...
Article
Full-text available
The abundance and diversity of bumblebees is in global decline due to, among other reasons, the spread of pathogens. Infection with the microsporidian parasites Nosema bombi and N. ceranae are known to have lethal but also sublethal effects on bumblebees, e.g. impaired learning and motor performance. However, it is unknown to what extent this affec...
Article
Full-text available
Context Abundance and diversity of bumblebees have been declining over the past decades. To successfully conserve bumblebee populations, we need to understand how landscape characteristics affect the quantity and quality of floral resources collected by colonies and subsequently colony performance. Objectives We therefore investigated how amount an...
Article
Full-text available
The abundance and the diversity of bumblebees have been declining for the past decades. While some species remain abundant and widespread, others have experienced vast declines. We tested if diet breadth and exclusiveness of floral resource use affected abundance and land-use response of bumblebees and honeybees in heterogeneous agricultural landsc...
Article
Full-text available
Vocal acquisition in songbirds and humans shows many similarities, one of which is that both involve a combination of experience and perceptual predispositions. Among languages some speech sounds are shared, while others are not. This could reflect a predisposition in young infants for learning some speech sounds over others, which combines with ex...
Article
Australia's biogeographical isolation has rendered many endemic species vulnerable to invaders. The recent spread of the cane toad (Rhinella marina) has caused serious population declines for some predatory reptile and mammal species. To determine a priori whether or not cane toad poisoning endangers native species, we can test the fates of predato...

Network

Cited By