Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 21 ISSUE 3
Written by Agatha POPESCU

The paper studied the dynamics of the economic value of pollination in Romania's orchards taking into account the main trees species producing fruits: plum, apple, cherry, apricot, pear and peach fruit trees in the period 2011- 2020. The data provided by National Institute of Statistics were used to quantify fruit production and value based on the average annual purchase price, and the economic value of fruit production produced by pollinators, taking into consideration de dependence degree by fruit tree species. After a period of decline, fruit tree growing has recovered especially during the last years making investments in new plantations of apple, plum, cherry, peach trees etc. In 2020, Romania had 138,000 ha of orchards, over 74 million fruit trees, a fruit production of 1.6 million tons of which 93.33% came from the six main fruit tree species: plum (48.4%), apple (34.4%), cherry(4.6%), pear (3.09%), apricot (1.74%) and peach trees (1%).The total value of fruit production from the six species accounted for Euro 1,303.69 Million at purchase price, being by 42.2% higher than in 2011. The results proved that the pollination economic value contributed by Euro 1,032 Million, that is by about 80% to fruit production value in 2020, which reflects how important is insect pollination in fruit trees growing. In 2020, the economic value of pollination per fruit tree accounted for: Euro 12.2 for plum tree, Euro 15.7 per apple tree, Euro 13.2 per pear tree, Euro 12.4 per peach tree, Euro 26.6 per cherry tree and Euro 14.5 per apricot tree. Therefore, the entomophilous fauna has to be preserved not only for biodiversity conservation but mainly for helping the sustainable development of fruit tree growing to produce more and of higher quality.

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