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• Field Vegetable Production in Hungary

  81-84.

  E. Kristóf

  I. Terbe

  Views:

  208

  Hungary is a country with excellent ecological potentials and with rich traditions in vegetable production. The total vegetable production area comprises about 100 000 ha and annual production amounts to 1.4-1.8 million tons, 75-80% comes from fields and the rest from forcing. Approximately 40 species are produced, but only 20 of them play a dominant role. The most important ones arc: sweet corn, peas, peppers, watermelon, onions, tomatoes, gherkin, carrots, beans, white cabbage.

  40-45% of the total production is processed, 20-30% sold on the fresh market and 30% exported.

  Vegetable production is based on rural farms of 1-5 ha average acreage. It provides living for about 70-100 000 families. The low number of producers' organisations is a major setback.

  Profitability of vegetable production is rather low. Production costs are high, wholesale prices are depressed.

  Vegetables are produced for the industry by contract. Fresh vegetables are sold through local markets (15-20%), the wholesale market (decreasing importance) and direct marketing (35-40%).

  Against the self-sufficiency of the country there is a seasonal import of vegetables mainly in winter and early springtime.

  Hungarian legal regulations are harmonized with the EU directives, EU standards are accepted and applied, traditionally good market connections and cooperation with several EU countries enable the country to be a partner of EU vegetable growers.

• A review of the bee pollination research on temperate zone crop plants in the past decade: results and the need of further studies

  7-23.

  P. Benedek

  Views:

  152

  Intense research was made on the pollination of cultivated crop plants in the temperate zone region during the past decade. Some 400 publications appeared on the subject and some additional 150 papers on the effect of pesticides to the most important pollinating insects, the honeybee and the wild bees. Progress of knowledge is discussed in this paper based on the most important publications. Most new results relate to field crops and deciduous fruit species and much less to field vegetables and small fruits. Great effort was taken to improve insect pollination of crops grown under cover. All these are connected to the utilization of the honeybee as a pollinating agent and much less to native or managed wild bees. However, a number of questions arose partly from the results of latest pollination research and partly from practical experiences in commercial plant production. These indicate several research tasks to understand and to solve the problems possibly in the near future. The questions concentrate on the effectiveness of bee visits in the pollination of individual crop plants and their different cultivars and on the reliable estimate of the overall amount of bees as well as on the control of bee density during the flowering periods of crops for optimal, controlled pollination in the changing environment of agricultural crop production.