L’Armeflhor (Reunion Island Association for the Modernization of the Fruit Economy, vegetable and horticultural) was awarded the ITA-Innov 2022 prize on March 2 at the Agricultural Show, awarded by French agricultural and agro-industrial technical institutes, in the “environment-biodiversity-climate” category, for having developed a method of pollinating tomatoes in greenhouses by a carpenter bee. Called here “smut fly”, the species Xylocopa fenestrata, once introduced into greenhouses, is capable of fertilizing tomato flowers by collecting them, as the bumblebee does in more temperate climates. But the bumblebee does not exist in Reunion and its introduction to the island is prohibited. Market gardeners must therefore pollinate tomato flowers manually, which requires a lot of time for an often imperfect result. For two years, the La Coccinelle biofactory has taken over from Armeflhor and is multiplying the anthrax fly to offer it to farmers. Six greenhouse tomato producers have already adopted it and obtained yield gains of 20 to 30% thanks to it..
An innovation from Armeflhor awarded an award in Paris
