Vol. 7, Issue 3 (2019)

Biological diversity is very important for the proper functioning of the ecosystem and for delivering ecosystem services. Maintaining high biodiversity in agro-ecosystems makes agricultural production more sustainable and economically viable. The combination of biodiversity conservation with profitable food production is one of the tasks of modern sustainable agriculture that faces the necessity of reconciling the productive, environmental, and social goals. It has been recognized that biodiversity is key in securing global food supply.

Arora and Kaur (2018) found better growth of earthworms in rice straw, cattle dung and azolla mixture can be due to more acceptability of this mixture to earthworms and/or due to the presence of components that were favourable for their growth. Biodiversity index is significantly higher in organic as compared to other systems (0.86 in Organic Vs 0.66 in conventional system for cabbage and 0.86 in Organic Vs 0.59 in conventional system for red beet). It showed that organic farming has lowest impact on environment (Bavec and Bavec, 2015) [4]. In fruit tree (Khasi Manadarin) based agri-horti system in North East Hill Region, it was observed that inclusion of high value crop (turmeric and ginger) with agricultural crops (groundnut and soybean) gave the highest net return.