Japanese researchers develop soap bubble-based pollination method

As wild insect populations decline and commercial honeybee colonies suffer maladies, farmers are seeking new ways to pollinate their crops. Some hire alternative insects, like blue orchard bees. Others drive huge pollen-spraying rigs, or daub each flower by hand with a paintbrush.

In the future, some may blow bubbles. In a study published Wednesday in iScience, researchers describe a type of soap bubble which, when laced with pollen, can propagate fruit as well as any of these other methods, The New York Times reports.

Eijiro Miyako, an associate professor in the School of Materials Science at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, has spent years looking for a better artificial pollination method — especially one that could replace hand pollination, which he said farmers have told him is “really hard work and annoying.”

In 2017, he and some colleagues built a new tool: a tiny drone lined with horsehair coated in a special gel. But the machine was clumsy and difficult to control: “It sometimes broke the flowers,” Dr. Miyako said.