A pollination expert says he wants to educate avocado growers about the role of flies and other insects in orchards, with the insects being just as important as bees for pollination.

Plant and Food Research pollination entomologist Brad Howlett has been researching pollination in avocados across the country for the past 13 years, and recently presented some of his work at a field day in Bundaberg, Queensland.

"Avocado growers sometimes utilise honey bees for pollination. They get hives put in. Honey bees are great because you can get them in high density quickly," he said.

"But there's actually a whole lot of other insects that we don't know a lot about, but the last couple of years we've been doing research on those.

"We've found that actually in the tri-state region (the border of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales), we get those [insects] doing the bulk of pollination."

Insects such as this ladybird and a small fly far outnumber honeybees in some avocado orchards. ( Supplied: Lisa Evans, Plant and Food Research )

Dr Howlett said in some orchards there were no honey bees at all, with all the pollination done by flies and beetles.

"Avocados are tricky because the flowers not only open as male one day and female the next, but are usually only open a few hours a day, or even open at night if it's cold," he said.

"That can be problematic if you're relying on bees, because they aren't active at night and don't like cold or rain.

"The benefit of encouraging populations of various insects during flowering is that each one has a different behaviour, so you have a better chance of them being active at the right times."

Dr Howlett said researchers were working to help farmers learn how to attract these insects.

"Essentially we know the identity of quite a few of the more common ones," he said.

"When we go back and look at what their life cycle is, the ones that are probably the easiest to deal with are ones with simple life cycles.

"Then farmers can look at measures based on further information on those life cycles.

"An example in Western Australia is an orchardist there who is putting in flowering plants within her rows and around the crop.

"[She's] also putting in grass to bring in hover flies, so she's already on the ball in terms of thinking of methods of how she can increase the role of other insects."

March flies can get pollen on various parts of their body while foraging on avocado flowers, which helps transfer it to flower stigmas. ( Supplied: Brian Cutting, Plant and Food Research )

Life cycles key to attracting flies

Dr Howlett said understanding the life cycles of a variety of insects could help boost yields and productivity for the avocado industry.

"The way to get them in your orchard is they need to have something in the environment that they breed on, and so they need to carry through the larval stage, which is often quite different to the adult that does the pollination," he said.

"In the case of some hover flies, they actually eat aphids on grass or other plants, so they've got a double benefit there.

"If you can promote those they'll do some degree of pest control but then also do pollination."

Insects such as hover flies are common in growing regions across Australia, while other species found in orchards in one state often corresponded with similar species found in other states.

Dr Howlett said growers should consider the effect of insects when altering their farm practices.

"The really great thing about some of these regions is there's already diversity there," Dr Howlett said.

"So some of the measures that are put in place might be really quite simple, because if you've already got the diversity, you want to maintain it.

"Modification [to farm practice] could affect them, so understanding what modifications of techniques and what it is in the technique that's not harming the insects, so we just keep tweaking it to make sure we keep those wild pollinators present."