Pollinators and the services provided by them is currently an important area of study as pollinators help in increasing global food security. Statistics reveal that approximately 70% of the tropical vegetable crop species depend on pollinators for optimum yields. Vegetable crops like various gourds, brinjal, cucumber, onions etc are optimized by the activity of pollinating insects (Roubik 1995, Klein 2007).Inadequate pollination can reduce crop quality as well as yield in these crops. In many vegetable crops pollination efficiency affects seed set which in turn affects size and quality of the fruit. Honey bees are efficient pollinators which improves the quality and yield of crops. While exploiting honey bees as pollinators, the importance of solitary bees which forms about 90% of the total bee species have been overlooked. One reason is that solitary bees are not as abundant as honey bees. But because of this, it cannot be concluded that they are not efficient pollinators as honey bees. Given the diversity of these bees they play a major role as important crop pollinators.
Origin of research problem
Several reports of declining pollinators worldwide emphasize the need for alternative pollinator taxa atleast in the future days (Allen Wardell, G.et al., 1998; Klein, A.M. et al, 2007) .There are several studies comparing the effectiveness of honeybee services with alternative pollinator services in temperate countries. Unmanaged pollinator taxa including solitary bees have proved to be superior pollinators when compared with honeybees in some crop species (Winfree et al. 2007) However few works have been done in our region regarding this topic. Its high time that we study the potentiality of solitary bees and other alternative insects as crop pollinators and their subsequent management as it will ensure food security in the future.