Brianne Du Clos, bee-mapping tool featured in Press Herald
The Portland Press Herald published a feature article on University of Maine doctoral candidate Brianne Du Clos as part of its “Meet” series. Du Clos led the development of BeeMapper, a new tool that allows farmers to predict how much help they will get from native bees in pollinating millions of low bush wild Maine blueberries. Du Clos’ research was part of a five-year UMaine project that was funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture specialty crop initiative grant to help the wild blueberry growers, with additional support from the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, according to the article. “I was always a plant person. I never wanted to study things that moved,” Du Clos said. But the opportunity to work with the wild blueberry ecosystem was too tempting to resist, the article states. “It is such a cornerstone of Maine’s economy, which relates to the bigger issue of food security. So many of our most nutritious foods are pollinated by bees, and keeping those crops vibrant is so important,” she said.